ACCA's new report, The new era of ethical challenges for professional accountants, contains some sobering statistics:
- 55% of 1,100 respondents form 135 countries have witnessed unethical behaviour in their career.
- 24% have been put under pressure to behave unethically in the last 3 years.
Despite the best efforts of accountancy regulators in mandating ethical training, and CPD providers (us included) in providing courses to help people think through the challenges, some people still succumb to the pressures.
Pressure to succeed and fear of failure are often quoted as reasons for going astray, but they are no excuse. The fear of failure was recently quoted by EY staff complaining of unfair dismissal. In an attempt to encourage CPD completion, EY ran a week-long initiative called Ignite Learning Week, encouraging staff to sign up to as many courses as possible to maximise learning. What of course they didn't mean was for staff to sign up to several courses all taking place at the same time and then claim they had attended them all. The staff who did so were dismissed, but were unhappy about it. They claimed that they had not been specifically told that they shouldn't do that.
Really? As professionals, we shouldn't need to be told not to falsify our CPD records. The argument, "It's not really my fault - I was put under a lot of pressure, so I simply had to cheat," is never going to cut much ice.
Issues of integrity
The issue at stake here, is one of integrity.
That is a principle that I have recently seen being taken very seriously. I have taken up a new role as Tribunals Chair for ICAEW. The Committees I am asked to chair are made up of lay members and accountants. While neither group is tolerant of a lack of integrity, it is the accountants who are most hard-line on this point. It has been gratifying to see how seriously they take the issue, regarding it as at the heart of their status as professionals. They see little scope for mitigation where issues of integrity are concerned. Be warned: if you are judged by your peers on this point, you had better be clean!
Regaining public trust
So what is the solution? How do we move beyond the stories and scandals that so damage the reputation of the profession? How do we shift the focus to the vast majority of accountants who are deeply ethical in their behaviour?
The recent IESBA four-year road map lays out IESBA's plan to help the profession recover from recent scandals and regain public trust. They stress as their number one objective, "To improve culture and governance in accountancy firms." Part 2 of the Code puts an onus on all accountants to encourage and promote an ethics-based culture in their organisations.
When David Gomez, ICAEW's Senior Lead, Ethics responded on behalf of the Institute, he went further and extended this to accountants in business:
"Increasingly, the CFO is being seen as the conscience of the company."
The effort to promote ethical behaviour and recover the reputation of the profession requires constant focus and effort on all sides, but at its heart must be the establishment in our organisations of an ethical culture.