"Simple steps make a big difference when it comes to living, and working, ethically."

Clare Levison, CPA, CGMA, is a member of the AICPA Professional Ethics Executive Committee and founder of Inspired Responsibility, a consulting company that delivers organizational education via positive messages and meaningful content. She joins host Kim Nilsen to share tips about ways to deal with ethical risks. 

TALKING POINTS 

The conversation touches on:

• The beauty of having a personal ethics statement.
• How to build an ethical work culture.
• Applying the AICPA Conceptual Framework, an approach designed for accountants that is part of the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct, to any ethical dilemma in life. From a high level – the framework contains four steps:
  
  1. Identifying threats – aka recognizing that you have a problem.
  2. Evaluating the threat.
  3. Identifying safeguards, which means answering what you are going to do about the threat.
  4. Evaluating how well the safeguard worked.

LINKS 

• Find out more about the AICPA Conceptual Framework.
• Clare is the founder of Inspired Responsibility
• For more on the work of accountants in the public interest, visit our Purpose In Action page at AICPA.org.

CONNECT

• Our guest Clare Levison can be reached on LinkedIn.
• The host for this episode is Kim Nilsen, Senior Director for Reputation and External Affairs at the North Carolina head office of AICPA & CIMA. 

Feedback and comments welcomed at podcast@aicpa-cima.com

This is a podcast from AICPA & CIMA, together as the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants. 

While the show is paused for the holidays, here’s a sense of what’s to come from new presenter Kim Nilsen.

Purpose in Action is taking a holiday break and the show has big plans for 2023. We’ll start the year on Jan. 25 with the first in a series of episodes exploring the many aspects of ethics. To get more on ethics until we’re back, check out Episode 4’s look at building an ethical career, or Episode 6’s discussion of the role we all can play in detecting and preventing fraud. 

LINKS

• For more on the work of accountants in the public interest, visit our Purpose In Action page at AICPA.org.
• Connect with presenter Kim Nilsen via LinkedIn.

Feedback and comments welcomed at podcast@aicpa-cima.com

This is a podcast from AICPA & CIMA, together as the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants. 

In a sense, everyone is an accountant, and therefore everyone is a fraud detective. 

We all have a role in preventing and detecting fraud, and it starts with treating compliance activities as more than just a check-the-box exercise. On this episode of the Purpose in Action podcast, global fraud detective Nigel Iyer, FCMA, CGMA, describes ways that everyone can contribute to the prevention and detection of fraud.

Iyer, a founder of the firm B4 Investigate in Oslo, Norway, explains:

• How to combat fraud in a passionate but also compassionate manner.
• Why everyone is an accountant, and by extension, everyone is a fraud detective.
• Technology’s role in the fight against fraud.
• How to stop fraud before it happens.

Connect with our guest, Nigel Iyer and take the B4 Investigate Fraud Detective Challenge, a 5-minute test of what kind of fraud detective you are.

Find out how accountants are protecting against money laundering amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  You can also learn how accounting professionals are working in cybersecurity roles to keep the public safe. For more on the work of accountants in the public interest, visit our Purpose In Action page at AICPA.org.

Feedback and comments welcomed at podcast@aicpa-cima.com

This is a podcast from AICPA & CIMA, together as the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants. 

Fraud perpetrated against seniors can cause tremendous harm. But family, friends and accounting professionals can help.

Older adults can be inundated with suspicious communications from potential fraudsters these days.

That's why this episode is a must-listen for older adults who are worried about being susceptible to fraud, as well as for their family members and friends who want to protect them.

Mitchell Freedman, CPA/PFS, and Ann Marie Milinazzo, CPA/PFS, share insights on fraud schemes to watch for. They also outline tactics that can be used to protect older adults from fraud.

You'll hear:

• Tips for recognizing fraudulent communications.
• How family members and friends can protect older adults, and how accounting professionals recognize whether family members have their parents’ or grandparents’ best interests at heart.
• How advance planning can help reduce older adults’ exposure to fraud.
• What to do if you become a victim of fraud.

Connect with our guests, Ann Marie Milinazzo and Mitchell Freedman.

For more on the work of accountants in the public interest, visit our Purpose In Action page at AICPA.org.

Feedback and comments welcomed at podcast@aicpa-cima.com

This is a podcast from AICPA & CIMA, together as the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants. 

The workplace is a great place to build character and integrity. Hear more from an expert in organizational behavior, professor Isaac Smith of Brigham Young University.

Looking at time spent at work as an opportunity to build character as well as profit is a good way to make the world a better place. Many people spend more than half of their waking hours during the week at work, so they can develop a stronger moral fiber by making the effort to build an ethical framework for their career.

Although leaders have a responsibility to give employees the ability to “pursue the good” at work, ethics expert Isaac Smith of Brigham Young University explains that people also have their own duty to work to be better.

Smith is an associate professor of organizational behavior and human resources at BYU, and in this episode of the Purpose in Action podcast he explains: 

• How to treat ethics as an opportunity to pursue the best qualities in everyone, rather than a compliance exercise.
• Strategies for influencing others and helping them improve their character.
• How accounting professionals such as finance department leaders and internal auditors help people behave ethically in an organization.
• What people can do to go to bed each night knowing they behaved in an ethical manner.
• The difference between the motivation to do good and the motivation to not do bad. 

For more on audit and audit quality, visit our Purpose In Action page at AICPA.org.

Connect with our guest, Isaac Smith.

Feedback and comments welcomed at podcast@aicpa-cima.com

This is a podcast from AICPA & CIMA, together as the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants. 

Continuous auditing is an increasingly popular practice that delivers more timely results for clients and the public. Samantha Bowling, CPA, CGMA, of Garbelman Winslow, and Paul Johnson, CPA, of Wipfli, explain how continuous auditing brings substantial benefits.

As technology continues to make information available faster than ever, a developing practice known as continuous auditing promises to provide enormous benefits to the public. If a deficiency develops in a company’s internal financial controls, continuous auditing has the potential to detect the problem far quicker than a yearly financial statement audit. Likewise, continuous auditing in an IT audit can discover a vulnerability quickly enough that a company can correct it before a breach occurs.

In this episode, we discuss:

• How continuous auditing improves outcomes and helps businesses perform better.
• The difference between continuous auditing and continuous monitoring.
• What continuous auditing means for auditors’ relationships with their clients.
• How public confidence in the marketplace can be increased by continuous auditing.

For more on audit and audit quality, visit our Purpose In Action page at AICPA.org.

Connect with our guests Samantha Bowling and Paul Johnson.

Feedback and comments welcomed at podcast@aicpa-cima.com

This is a podcast from AICPA & CIMA, together as the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants. 

Critical professional licensing laws are under attack in legislatures throughout the nation. But CPAs are fighting back to protect the public interest.

Legislators on both sides of the aisle have been pushing for laws that would eliminate professional licensure requirements in a handful of states across the country.

Accounting professionals and state CPA societies have been fighting to preserve professional licensing rules because they protect the public. Licensing rules give consumers comfort that when they hire a CPA, they will be working with a professional who is held to high standards of expertise, training, and continuing professional education.

In this episode, CPA society leaders Judy Proctor, CPA, CGMA, and Ron Gitz, CPA, CGMA, explain how the public and members of the CPA profession can rally around licensure provisions. Proctor (West Virginia) and Gitz (Louisiana) have been on the front lines of these efforts in their respective states.

TALKING POINTS

• Why licensing is more important in some professions than in others.
• What polling shows about the public’s perception about the importance of licensing regulations.
• How legislators respond when CPA leaders try to educate them on the importance of licensing.
• How the Alliance for Responsible Professional Licensing (ARPL) is bringing together leaders of multiple professions to assist in advocating for licensure. 

To find out more about multidisciplinary efforts to protect CPA licensure, please visit the ARPL site at responsiblelicensing.org.

Visit our Purpose In Action page at AICPA.org.

Connect with our guests Ron Gitz. and Judy Proctor.

Feedback and comments welcomed at podcast@aicpa-cima.com

This is a podcast from AICPA & CIMA, together as the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants. 

As of September 2021, the U.S. federal government had more than $34 trillion in liabilities and less than $5 trillion in assets, according to the federal financial statements for fiscal year 2021.

Expenses related to the COVID-19 pandemic have added to the federal deficit, and rising interest rates make it more difficult to pay off what is owed.

Greg Anton, CPA, CGMA, a BDO partner and former chair of the AICPA Board of Directors, has long been an advocate of federal fiscal responsibility. He joins us to explain the severity of the deficit problem, which has the potential to spiral and create economic conditions unfavorable for businesses, investors and the public at large. Anton also offers his own suggestions for responsible federal budgeting.

TOPICS
• How the federal financial statement works, and the difference between the financial statement and the budget.
• What the federal balance sheet says about the government’s assets and liabilities.
• What rising interest rates may do to the deficit in the coming years.
• What the public can do to advocate for responsible budgeting.

TAKE IT FURTHER
For more information on the challenges to U.S. federal government fiscal sustainability, visit aicpa.org/whatsatstake.

Read about how government finance leaders delivered critical services to the public during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Connect with our guest Greg Anton

Visit our Purpose In Action page at AICPA.org.

Feedback and comments welcomed at podcast@aicpa-cima.com

This is a podcast from AICPA & CIMA, together as the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants.