Chartered Accountants Australia & New Zealand (CA ANZ), a professional body with regulatory powers, has announced that it will require members to pledge annually to behave with integrity and competence in an effort to restore trust to the sector, as reported by the Australian Financial Review.
In a publication sent to its members earlier this month, CA ANZ outlined recommendations for rebuilding this trust in the accounting industry. The recommendations cover actions that CA ANZ, the Accounting Professional and Ethical Standards Board (APESB), and the government can take to raise ethical and behavioral standards.
The APESB creates and administers a Code of Ethics to which accountants in Australia and New Zealand must adhere. In its recommendations, CA ANZ urged the APESB to include in that code a requirement that members report wrongdoing by peers. For its own part, CA ANZ committed to expanding its mandatory ethical training to six hours every three years and creating new training for non-accounting employees at audit firms.
This initiative was prompted by several scandals in Australia's audit sector, including the PwC tax leaks scandal. In November, CA ANZ levied the maximum possible penalty on PwC, $50 thousand plus $45 thousand in costs. Since then, the maximum fine has been increased to $250 thousand.
Last year, Starling Insights published "Renal Failure: A Crisis in Audit Culture?," a Deeper Dive discussing the recent rash of scandals in the audit profession and how it impacts society at large.
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