INTHEBLACK February 2024 - Magazine - Page 23
“We have to work out, for example, whether
or not the person who initiates the system
and designs it has adequately discharged their
responsibilities in terms of building the ethics
into the design itself and putting in certain
protections and restraints that we want.”
Technologies like generative AI should
always be bound by a degree by ethical
consideration, Longstaff says.
“You’ve got to start at the very beginning
and say, ‘What is enabled by this technology?’
How am I going to restrain it, so that there are
only things which are intended and, hopefully,
for the good? How do you minimise the use of
it for other purposes?
“There can also be another level of
accountability, in terms of the person who
deploys it,” Longstaff adds. “To what extent
have they put in place measures to ensure that
it is only used for the proper purposes for
which it was designed?”
GOVERNANCE AND
PROFESSIONAL SCEPTICISM
APES 110 Code of Ethics for Professional
Accountants sets out the fundamental principles
of ethics for the profession. It requires
accountants to be independent of mind in
order to act with integrity and to exercise
objectivity and professional scepticism.
“If someone who’s performing an audit
has ethical concerns around the information
that AI is giving them, whether that’s around
bias or accuracy or whatever it may be, they
have a responsibility to raise their concerns,”
De Alwis says.
Longstaff adds that the results produced
by generative AI tools should also be “able to
be tested against analogue judgement in the
real world”.
“This is not different to what accountants
have always done, particularly in the auditing
profession,” he says.
“Companies are constantly producing
accounts, which they claim to be a true
and fair representation of the state of the
company’s financial affairs, only for it to be
discovered through the independent review
of auditors that perhaps it’s not true.
“If you’ve got an expert system like AI
producing findings that are supposed to
describe the world – well, a good accountant
would go into the world and say, ‘Does it look
right? Is there any evidence beyond what the
system has produced to validate that?’
“These are ‘bread and butter’ things to do for
a profession that is oriented towards things
being true,” Longstaff says. “That’s a core skill
to bring to bear.”
TECH UPDATES
TO THE IESBA CODE
The International Ethics
Standards Board for Accountants
(IESBA) has recently released
technology-related revisions to the
IESBA Code to better accord with
the development of technology.
These revisions aim to guide the
ethical mindset and behaviour of
professional accountants in both
business and public practice as they
adapt to new technology.
The revisions include:
• Strengthening the Code in guiding
the mindset and behaviour
of professional accountants
when they use technology.
• Providing enhanced guidance
fit for the digital age in relation
to the fundamental principles of
confidentiality, and professional
competence and due care,
as well as in dealing with
circumstances of complexity.
• Strengthening and clarifying
the International Independence
Standards (IIS) by addressing
the circumstances in which firms
and network firms may or may
not provide a technology-related
non-assurance service to an
audit or assurance client.
The revisions are set to come into
effect in December 2024.
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