Ethics in Professional Practice - What Canadian CPAs Need to Know
Overview:
The CPA profession requires its members to protect the public interest. This places the practitioner between the requirements of laws, regulations, standards and rules, and the demands of clients as paying customers. Often, the demands of the client contradict the rules and regulations. Thus, professional practice becomes a balancing act between these two forces.
In this course, we take the approach that ethical values and business practices are essential for a professional practice to balance these forces and to grow and succeed. The course will help practitioners contemplate actual ethical dilemmas they face, and be prepared for dilemmas they may encounter in the future, regardless of the size of the practice or the role they play within the practice. We provide a step-by-step approach that will help CPAs navigate through complex and sensitive issues. We demonstrate how to take a risk-based approach that considers the probability and impact of ethics-related risks occurring. We examine three dimensions of these risks: staff, client and practice management. We then consider prevention, detection and mitigation strategies for all risks.
Course Content:
In this course, you will gain knowledge about the following topics:
- Dilemmas in professional practice
- Ethics in professional practice
- Ethics fundamentals
- How to perform an ethics risk analysis
- Identification and mitigation of client-focused risks
- Identification and mitigation of staff-focused risks
- Identification and mitigation of practice management-focused risks
- Emerging issues in professional practice
- Self-assessment exercises
Learning Objectives:
Upon completing this course, you should be able to:
- Examine the complex role of the professional accountant from an ethics lens.
- Explain how to utilize an ethics risk analysis for your professional practice.
- Describe ethical risks related to staff, clients, and practice management.
- Identify and evaluate risks you are currently facing in your own practice.
- Explain how to stratify clients by ethics risk level.
- Identify steps to prevent, detect and mitigate ethics risks that have a high probability and high impact.
Who Will Benefit:
This course is intended for all CPA members in corporate, not-for-profit, and public sector organizations. It is suitable for CPAs at all levels of their careers and in all types of positions, including those in board, management, staff and audit positions.