The Covid-19 pandemic has led to the most challenging environment any of us have experienced in modern times. And while businesses recover, professional accountants are faced with new and intense ethical dilemmas, which require them to exercise all their professional expertise and moral judgement.

ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) recently released a new white paper ‘Ethics in a Covid-19 world’ exploring the role of ethics against the backdrop of the pandemic. This is part of ACCA’s focus on how we can, globally, rethink business for a sustainable recovery.

The paper reveals one in five respondents has directly or indirectly, via a work colleague, encountered a situation where as a result of Covid-19, ethics were at risk of compromise. Among those who had experienced such compromise, a quarter of issues related to the use of technology. The report highlights a number of examples in which the pandemic has increased the risk of ethical compromise.

The launch of the paper was part of ACCA’s annual celebration of ethics in the month of October, leading up to Global Ethics Day and beyond. Ethics is at the heart of the organization and ACCA and its members are proud to uphold and promote the highest ethical standards.

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