Albert Einstein famously said: “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.” So many of us point fingers at the rampant corruption in the public sector, while in in the private sector we don’t think about ourselves and the wrongs we’ve normalised through…
It is only if the profession prioritises serving the public interest above all else that it will be truly trusted by the public. Any firm or profession that subordinates this purpose to other purposes like being respected as the provider of smart and innovative solutions by clients will be distracted and will not adequately fulfil…
SAICA’s principal purpose is the enhancement of the relevance, values, competence and influence of its members in South Africa and abroad, and to contribute to economic and social development in South Africa as documented in its constitution. To achieve its purpose, SAICA has adopted as one of its fundamental and enduring long-term ancillary objects for…
The Professional Ethical Choice Model described here is one of the experiential learning tools used on SAICA’s mentoring programme, Development of the model A former chair of the Health Professions Council of South Africa’s (HPCSA) Ethics Committee, Professor Charles Malcolm, shares a story of how he came up with the idea of using a method…
The SAICA mentoring programme, which started in 2017, is aimed at developing and maintaining an ethical professional culture. One of the perennial challenges for professional bodies has been how to ensure ethical behaviour of their members to protect clients and the public and to protect their members at the same time. High-profile ethical breaches have…
Training offices play a critical role in developing future SAICA members and associates. For a long time, the emphasis of the training programme has been on providing an opportunity for trainees to practise and demonstrate technical competence while developing as professionals. The amended training programme competencies in 2016 started to place more emphasis on professional…
Trainees have identified a limited focus on ethics guidance and mentoring, as well as a lack of ethical leadership and training, particularly in the smaller and medium-sized audit firms. The accounting profession in South Africa is receiving a lot of negative attention due to the unethical conduct of a handful of its members. This has…
The emphasis on ethical culture in organisations has become much more pronounced in recent years. There seems to be a realisation that regulations and compliance to regulations − important as they may be – simply are not sufficient to ensure sustained ethical conduct in organisations. In fact, a too strong emphasis on regulation and compliance…
Ethical decision-making rooted in the fundamental principles, supported by the decision-making framework known as the conceptual framework, and informed by efforts to address the five sources of bias produces a better result, insulates the decision-maker from questionable conduct, and is superior to an ‘I know best’ approach. There is a school of thought commonly held…
When asking a school child what values his/her school embraces, he/she will quickly tell you: respect, honesty, fairness, responsibility, acceptance, excellence … We all develop personal values from a very young age, and these values are personally embedded in who we are, where we come from, what we have experienced, and how we see the…