As a valued member of our professional body, I wonder how often the concepts of ethical behaviour and integrity cross your mind, especially as we live in a country, and on a continent, where many others don’t seem to have much care for them at all? Corruption is rife, “State Capture” the topic of the moment, and ‘facilitating’ business deals a fairly common practice!
A colleague and I recently attended an engagement between the SAQA recognised professional bodies and the Gauteng Ethics Advisory Council (something that I had never heard of before, but was pleasantly surprised to find out actually existed!).
At this meeting, and amongst other things, they tabled a research report emanating from an Ethical Practises Survey in 2017, conducted by the Anti-intimidation and Ethical Practises Forum. Numerous professionals in the accounting and auditing fields were surveyed, and, in the main, believed that their Institutes create an ethics awareness and provided guidelines on how to act ethically. How well are we doing on this front? During 2017, I conduct numerous workshops around the country for both IITPSA members and non-members on the concepts of professionalism, ethics and integrity, and continuing professional development. Although we had acceptable attendance at the workshops, I am sure that many others could have benefited from these discussions. Should we be holding more, dedicated workshops / seminars on behaving ethically in our profession and in society? Please drop me a line (ceo@iitpsa.org.za) to let me know what you think.
In line with this, perhaps we should also ask ourselves, “when was the last time that I looked at the Institute’s code of conduct?” (printed on the front of my membership certificate and on the back of my membership card), as this is the foundational guideline for ethical behaviour of the members of our Institute. As professionals in our community of practice (the world of ICT), we really need to be leading the way and setting the example of good, ethical, professional behaviour – in both our work and private lives. We should do this, not only because the Institute requires it of us, but because, as upstanding professionals and members of the community, we actually want to!
Food for thought….
Best
Tony Parry
