Your 2023 ethics scorecard: reflecting on professional ethics

CPD Campus presents the third in our three-part series on your 2023 ethics scorecard – reflecting on professional ethics. The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) defines “professional ethics” as the fundamental ethical principles and values applied by a professional accountant to decision-making, conduct, and the relationship between the professional, his/her stakeholders and society.

In this learning intervention, we provide you with the opportunity to reflect about those views, morals and beliefs, principles, and standards according to which you, in your capacity as a professional person, interact with your employer, clients, colleagues, the profession and society at large. What is the real footprint that you leave behind by means of your relationships, as qualified professional in the accounting and finance profession, with other stakeholders? Are you still acting ethically in terms of the latest version of the SAICA Code of Professional Conduct (CPC)?

Also note: SAICA members are required to undertake mandatory annual reflection about ethics, in the categories of personal, business, and professional ethics, as per SAICA’s Circular 02/2021. Also remember that all SAICA members make an annual declaration to SAICA that they have read the SAICA Code of Professional Conduct (CPC) at least once in every calendar year. Members of the Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors (IRBA) are required to undertake at least three hours’ professional development (CPD) in ethics.

Attending this three-part ethics series, will help you address your professional development requirements by these professional bodies in ethics. In attending this session, you will be developing the following professional competencies:

• Main competency group: Professional values and attitudes
• Sub-competency group: Ethics
• Specific competency/ies: Professional ethics