Professional Ethics Remains a Top Priority

Professional Ethics Remains a Top Priority

Continued from the Home Page

The Task Force was led by former Society President Brian Caswell, and after months of meetings, it delivered to the Executive Committee a report that elucidated recommendations for the profession’s growth potential in quality control and ethics. The report underscored three key components to this growth: ethics, peer review and education.

“The ultimate outcome of the NYSSCPA’s programs for ethics, peer review, and continuing professional education should be to ensure that financial statements and other reports associated with CPAs are transparent and meet the expectations of users, and to elevate NYSSCPA members’ ethical behavior above the requirements of laws and regulations,” the report states. It is exactly this outcome that we have been working toward since the report was issued.

Pursuant to the recommendations of the Task Force, the Board of Directors created the Quality Enhancement Policy Committee (QEPC). You probably have heard and read a lot of buzz about the QEPC over the past couple of months. One mission of the QEPC is to develop a conceptual alternative to the AICPA peer review model. The Society’s Board on Sept. 22 voted to approve a QEPC draft white paper outlining the key concepts to a new peer review model that raises the quality bar for the peer review process. The QEPC is now working to complete the white paper and will subsequently seek input from other relevant committees.

Peer review has been the headline maker in The Trusted Professional lately, but I don’t want our membership to lose sight of the fact that improving peer review is only one facet of elevating the quality of the profession. We have to keep our eyes on the bigger picture, which, in addition to peer review, includes ethics and education. We have to improve in all three areas, and not get bogged down in just one or two.

In New York, there exists a robust ethics structure. The Society’s Professional Ethics Committee, chaired by Francis T. Nusspickel, is charged with enforcing and reviewing the ethical standards of the Society. Specifically, the committee’s responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the investigation of complaints alleging violations of the Society’s Code of Conduct and Bylaws and state and federal laws and regulations, for possible disciplinary action. The committee also reviews the Code of Conduct to ensure that it is adequate under current conditions and, when necessary, recommends to the QEPC appropriate changes to the Code.

In an ongoing commitment to ethics, the Society has continued its participation in the Joint Ethics Enforcement Program (JEEP) with the AICPA. The purpose of JEEP is to prevent a redundancy in investigating ethics infractions among members of the Society and the AICPA. The Society and the AICPA conduct their respective investigations autonomously, with concurrence sought on the resulting decision and disciplinary action.

The Society is working to improve the quality of the profession, and we encourage your input as we continue to strive to exceed the ethical minimums required by state and federal law. The real enhancement of ethics, however, happens on an individual level.

Society members should accept the obligation to act in a way that will serve the public interest, honor the public trust and demonstrate commitment to professionalism. And in order to maintain and broaden public confidence, members should perform all professional responsibilities with the highest sense of integrity. Additionally, members should maintain objectivity and be free of conflicts of interest in discharging professional responsibilities. Members in public practice should be independent in fact and appearance when providing auditing and other attestation services. The codes of conduct of both the NYSSCPA and the AICPA reflect these ideals. If you have not taken a look at the Society’s Code of Conduct in a while, I recommend that you do so. It is well worth a few minutes of your time.

While the QEPC works to complete its white paper on peer review, the committee also will be focusing on ethics. In the coming months, the committee will analyze and assess New York’s ethics program. The QEPC also will conduct a review of the Society’s Code of Conduct. These reassessments of ethical guidelines are necessary and will serve as a base from which we can rebuilt the foundation and the public face of our profession.