Business Ethics (What Canadian CPAs Need To Know)

More and more CPAs are finding themselves dealing with unanticipated ethical dilemmas in the workplace. This may be on an individual level, impacting the CPAs personal and professional well-being. It may also be on an organization-wide level, when dealing with difficult business decisions. This has become even more apparent and relevant during the global COVID-19 pandemic.  

While most CPAs may share a common theoretical understanding of ethical principles and values, navigating complex and multifaceted ethical issues in the workplace can be challenging, confusing and taxing. This course provides CPAs with the tools to develop, strengthen, and begin applying their personal ethical compass in real life situations. 
 
You will examine the impact of ethical behaviour based on an individual’s career trajectory as well as on a larger scale, on an organization’s bottom line. You will closely examine the tough ethical issues that board members, managers, auditors, and other accounting professionals encounter in fulfilling their duties.

The course delves into a decision-making framework and discuss a step-by-step process to help examine and evaluate all relevant factors to arrive at the best possible decision. You will also learn how to use and apply their CPA Professional Code of Conduct as a guide during difficult decision-making.  
 
Using plenty of real-life case studies and examples, we demonstrate the results of ethical and unethical approaches to business decisions. This course takes a very conversational, practical and solution-oriented approach to dealing with business ethics issues in the Canadian context.

Course Content:

In this course, you will gain knowledge about the following topics:

• Is there a return on investment on ethical business practices?
• Key principles of business ethics
• Code of Professional Conduct for CPAs across Canada
• Dealing with unethical situations and people
• Ethical decision making framework
• Case studies
• Prevention of unethical behaviour in the workplace
• Implementation of ethical infrastructure and practices
• Learnings from global and local success stories  

Learning Objectives:

Upon completing this course, you should be able to: 

• Explain the returns on investment from ethical business practices
• Summarize parts of the CPA Code of Professional Conduct that are pertinent to current ethics-related challenges CPAs face
• Apply a decision-making framework to select the most reasonable course of action in an ethical dilemma
• Identify rationalizations, danger phrases, red flags and warning signs of ethical misconduct by colleagues and employees
• Identify threats and safeguards for ethical behaviour at senior management, middle management and operational levels of an organization