IESBA PLANS Roundtables—Enhancing Ethics Standards for Professional Accountants
 
The International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA, the Ethics Board) is holding a series of three global roundtables to gain additional feedback on its project to address professional accountants’ responsibilities regarding the disclosure to an appropriate authority of suspected non-compliance with laws and regulations (formerly called suspected illegal acts) by a client or employer:
 
——Hong Kong S.A.R, China, on May 20, 2014;

——Brussels, Belgium, on June 3, 2014; and

——Washington DC, USA, on July 10, 2014.

The Ethics Board initiated the project in response to regulatory concerns that the current confidentiality provisions in the Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants (the Code) are an impediment to whistleblowing in relation to non-compliance or suspected non-compliance with laws and regulations. The issues revolve around how to balance professional accountants’ responsibility to act in the public interest against confidentiality, one of the five fundamental principles in the Code. At the heart of the debate is what is reasonable to ask of auditors and other professional accountants within their public interest mandate.
 
These events are a follow-up to the board’s August 2012 Exposure Draft, which described the circumstances in which a professional accountant would be required or expected to breach confidentiality and disclose the matter to an appropriate authority. The roundtables will bring together representatives from a broad range of stakeholder groups around the world, including regulators, investors, preparers, audit committee members, IFAC member bodies, firms and national standard setters, to share their perspectives on the Ethics Board’s indicative direction of its revised proposals on the topic.

As space is limited, attendance is by invitation only, which will follow shortly. If you are interested in participating, we invite you to submit your expression of interest via email to KaushalGandhi@ethicsboard.org by January 31, 2014, indicating your name, job title, organization and preferred location.