INTHEBLACK May 2025 - Magazine - Page 23
“In the past, businesses could be very capable in their products and services
and their brands would be strong, but now it’s the character of those organisations
and those leaders that is in question, largely because of the current visibility into
the way that they work and the way products and services are sold.”
RACHEL BOTSMAN
can deliver on and ensuring that those
commitments align to the core business.
“If you are an oil company, for example,
then what really matters to customers is
the climate,” he says. “If you have no strategy
on dealing with the climate, and instead your
social engagement is on ancillary things, then
people will look at this and say, ‘Oh, that’s
just some sort of greenwashing’.”
KEEPING THE FAITH
When trust is put at risk or lost, how can
leaders fix the problem?
Nino Tesoriero, chief counsel at Ogilvy PR,
which specialises in crisis communications,
says honesty is always the best policy.
“The most important thing is to be
100 per cent honest in where you’ve gone
wrong and acknowledge it,” he says. “I often
find that that’s the hardest part; leaders
often don’t see what the perception is of their
business. When there is a perceived break
in trust, they need to try to see what it looks
like from the outside. If you’re going to restore
trust and learn how you ended up in this
position, you need to understand how other
people see you.”
Rebuilding trust often depends on how
it was lost, says Botsman.
“It’s often easier to regain trust if the
problem is on the capability side,” she says.
“If there is a product flaw, for example,
procedures can be changed to ensure it doesn’t
happen again. But if you look at most trust
crises, they tend to sit on the character side.
“It is usually a behaviour problem, where
someone has made a decision based
on incentives or for their own personal gain,”
says Botsman. “When trust is damaged
in this way, it is very hard to recover from,
and the mistake most organisations make
is to blame it on a capability problem.
ETHICS FOR ACCOUNTANTS
Few can avoid ethical quandaries. In the accounting
profession, for example, APES 110 Code of Ethics for
Professional Accountants outlines the fundamental
principles of ethics and establishes the standard
of behaviour that is expected. However, grey areas
can still emerge and the best course of action may not
always be clear.
“Accountants have the five fundamental principles of ethics
outlined in APES 110, but when you’re trying to apply them
to the nuances of a dilemma, grey areas can arise,” says
Belinda Zohrab-McConnell, regulatory and standards lead
at CPA Australia.
“Accountants have to utilise their professional judgement
constantly. If anything gives you pause to think — it’s
probably for good reason. Behaving in a collegial way
by running an ethical dilemma past somebody who is also
familiar with your ethical obligations can be very helpful.”
The fundamental principles outlined in APES 110 are:
• Integrity: Conduct all professional and business
relationships in an honest and straightforward manner.
• Objectivity: Exercise professional judgement without being
compromised by influence, bias or conflicts of interest.
• Professional competence and due care: Attain and
maintain a required level of professional knowledge
and skill to ensure that clients receive competent service
based on current technical and professional standards
and relevant legislation.
• Confidentiality: Respect the privacy of information gained
through professional relationships.
• Professional behaviour: Comply with relevant laws
and regulations, behave in a manner that promotes
public interest in all professional activities and
relationships, and avoid conduct that may discredit
the accounting profession.
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