Ethics Resources

On this page, you will find a range of ethics resources and educational and training material produced by the CCAB, to help professional accountants comply with the requirements of the Code of Ethics.

Why ethics is so important to the profession

In the video below, Professor Pat Barker (academic, accountant and public body leader) discusses what ethics means to her, and why ethics is so important to the profession.

Resilience under pressure

The ethical survey of the profession undertaken by CCAB in 2021 revealed that some accountants face significant pressures to act unethically.

Take a look at the Survey Results

On 15th June 2023, the CCAB Ethics Group hosted an ethics webinar to highlight the learnings from that survey and to promote strategies for making better ethical decisions; and to discuss the ethical challenges and opportunities facing accountants. The webinar featured views from a range of contributors and a Q/A session with members of the CCAB Ethics Group.

Key themes arising from the webinar were that:

Accountants can do two things to combat the pressures they face to act unethically. Firstly, they can increase their resilience by maintaining their ethical competency. Secondly, they can act to improve the culture in the organisations in which they work.

Ethics is a required professional competency, not a “nice to have”. Professional accountants need to be fully familiar with the Code of Ethics and the fundamental principles set out within the Code; and should understand how to use the Conceptual Framework to guard against threats to compliance with the fundamental principles.

Professional accountants can use a range of tools and ethical decision-making frameworks to assist them (and the organisations that they work for) to make better ethical decisions. Increasingly, the CFO is being seen as “the conscience of the company”. In this role, they have an important part to play in promoting an ethical culture within their organisations.

You can watch a clip of the webinar highlights here:

At the webinar, we showed a short film discussing the ethical challenges facing accountants. Watch the film here.

View the full webinar - Resilience Under Pressure

Ethical challenges facing the accountancy profession

We asked five professionals with business experience and an accountancy regulator for their views on a range of topical ethical issues.

Ethics as a competency

Ethical decision making

Ethical culture

Accountants as agents for change

Whistleblowing and speaking up

Watch Dominic Hall discuss the importance of speaking up

The CCAB webinar on 15th June 2023 featured a session on “speaking up” presented by Ann Buttery, Head of Ethics, Policy Leadership at ICAS.

View the presentation slide deck here:

The challenges posed by artificial intelligence

Watch Barry Doyle and Níall Fitzgerald discuss AI here:

The ethics of sustainability

Watch Malcolm Bacchus discuss the ethical challenges that sustainability poses to the profession

Advice to young accountants

We asked our panel what advice they would give to youngers members of the profession.
See what they had to say