Trust and Ethics

Fake news. Misinformation. Bias. These unfortunate realities create opportunities and challenges for accountants responsible for providing reliable and trustworthy information to their clients. Have you encountered this at your organization? How did you work through it?

The metaphor of a double-edged sword is often used in describing technology. One side reflects the myriad of opportunities technology can provide for professional accountants and their organizations. The other side denotes the imminent challenges that need to be safeguarded against. The second of a four-part series, Technology is a double-edged sword: Opportunities and challenges for the accountancy profession, discusses ethical leadership in an era of complexity and digital change in further detail. Read the publication and let us know your input!

In Ethical Leadership in an Era of Complexity and Digital Change we note that:

Cuban-French author Anaïs Nin said, “We see things not as they are, but as we are.” As PAs, we are committed to being objective and acting with integrity, but our ability to do so is challenged by unconscious biases such as groupthink and confirmation bias. Biases at an individual level can cloud our judgment and threaten our ability to apply fundamental ethical principles consistent with the profession’s commitment to the public interest.

Harvard’s Implicit Association Test (IAT) is an interesting tool to help us uncover unconscious biases and examine them more closely. 

Once you’ve tried one or more of the IATs, tell us what you think. Did you find them useful? What did you learn? 

“Technology is a Double-edged Sword” is a publication currently in the works by Brian Friedrich, LLM, MEd, C.Dir, FCPA, FCGA and Laura Friedrich, MSc, CIA, FCPA, FCGA. Your feedback will speak directly to them to drive the publication’s narrative on how ethics can influence decision-making on technological development across businesses. They’ll be analyzing all your answers—make sure to let them know what you have to say! 

Disruptive technologies raise a broad range of ethics challenges, including:

• transparency (e.g., trade-offs with confidentiality)
• explainability (e.g., neural networks with deep learning)
• accountability (e.g., for decisions made by autonomous systems)
• human rights protection and values alignment (e.g., equity and fairness, inclusion, collaboration)
• accuracy, reliability, and effectiveness (e.g., justifying resource allocations)
• privacy and autonomy with respect to personal data (e.g., data ownership issues)
• safety and security (e.g., cyberattacks)

To what extent should CPAs be responsible for promoting ethics within technology development, implementation, and use in our organizations? Does your answer change depending on whether the technology in question is directly or only indirectly related to financial/corporate reporting?

How are you involved in helping your organization or clients pursue initiatives in sustainability, climate responsibility, equity, social justice, etc.? Where do you see CPAs adding value in these areas now and in the future?

Complicated problems differ from complex ones in important ways: 

Although complicated problems are challenging to solve, once solutions are found, they generally stay solved. Complex problems, on the other hand, are not solvable by applying static algorithms, rules and processes.

How is complexity in the professional environment impacting the role of CPAs as ethical leaders and trusted advisors? 

Share your answer with us below!