INTHEBLACK July 2026 - Magazine - Page 15
Accounting can be a core
governance tool shaping
decisions, priorities and
definitions of success within
and outside of organisations.
Indigenous governance
highlights the need to
embed social, cultural and
environmental considerations
into decision-making.
Benjamin Murray CPA says
that accountants can learn
from Indigenous business
governance to adopt a broader,
more holistic approach.
Lessons from
Indigenous
governance
As Australia marks NAIDOC Week this month, Benjamin Murray CPA
reflects on what years of work with Indigenous organisations has revealed
about the deeper role of accounting. He views the profession not simply
as a technical discipline, but as one of the core mechanisms through
which organisations are governed.
Words Chris Sheedy
Photography Anthony Geernaert
ACCOUNTING IS OFTEN DESCRIBED
in functional terms as compliance, assurance
and financial reporting. These are important
factors, but Benjamin Murray CPA suggests
that they are far from the whole story.
Over decades of work with Indigenous
organisations, Murray, a descendant of the
Anaiwan people in northern New South Wales,
has come to see the profession differently.
Rather than as a support function that sits
alongside governance, accounting is one
of the primary tools through which governance
itself is exercised, he says, and shapes what
organisations pay attention to. It influences
what counts as success, what risks are
recognised, what decisions are made
and whose interests are prioritised.
Murray has contributed at a broader,
system-wide level to the design and
implementation of governance frameworks.
That has brought into sharp relief the
realisation that Western accounting is not
neutral, he says. The discipline is instead
built on a particular worldview. “Western
governance systems prioritise efficient,
effective financial performance. Those
prioritisations are deeply embedded
in accounting itself.”
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