As qualified accountants we so often focus on our advancement as professionals that we sometimes forget that certain competencies we are required to possess, are of a more personal nature. Here we think of personal ethics, personal citizenship, self-development, emotional regulation, emotional display, and some more. The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) requires their members to annually undertake mandatory reflection about personal, business, and professional ethics as part of their outcome based CPD policy. Workers receive legal protection against harassment in the workplace and the ability to blow the whistle on acts of corruption, theft, fraud, and other crimes committed by workers is present in most large organisations these days. Workers have never had more rights than now and appear to be well protected from every possible angle by many laws and regulations. It all does sound fantastic.
Yet, at five o’clock each afternoon, the Cinderella-like reverse transformation for many, rapidly begins… Then the importance of ticking the CPD boxes of ethical professional competence and model personal citizenship, suddenly declines and many can, at last, go back to who they really are: perpetrators of crimes against the vulnerable.
The question should certainly be asked whether our nation possesses signs of intense, unresolved, and repressed inner anger, perhaps caused by the usual culprits of unpunished crimes, economic, governance and financial failures, accelerated decay in an already morally corrupt society, and many others. Are these factors the motivating drivers causing anger to be mismanaged so that the innocent and vulnerable must pay the price merely as a release mechanism?
Regardless of any cause whatsoever, there is never an acceptable explanation for violence of any sort, be it gender-based, committed in major cities or on remote farms, or of an emotional nature. It is our responsibility to ensure that we, as members of one of the noblest professions in the world, always act with impeccable and unquestionable integrity – especially in those situations where no-one in a position of power can be impressed by how “ethical” we are! When declaring myself competent in ‘emotional regulation and display’ is evidenced by how I practically manage my anger and emotions in my personal life, even when I am provoked.
When the clock strikes eight in the morning and my work life begins, who am I really when I visit the restroom and take an honest look at myself in the mirror? Am I the office’s Mr Nice Guy who caused a road-rage incident on my way to work when a minibus tax cut in front of me? Am I the husband or father who physically, or emotionally, harmed a loved one at home the evening before? Am I the decorated CFO who didn’t take no for an answer last night? Because if I am, the message is clear: there is no place for me in this profession!
At CPD Campus, we dedicate ourselves to the values that we promote. We publicly undertake to play our part in continuously educating the members of our profession on being the same admirable ‘professionals’ in their private lives, too. And extending the annual compliance, we claim with a set of professional values and attitudes to our own homes as well. Can we tick the box on 31 December each year that we have complied with the personal values of respect, humility, dignity, decency, empathy, and care, when we are not busy being professionals? We belong to a professional body where “Integritas” as a slogan underpins everything we stand for and believe in – let’s ensure that we live that value 365 days a year and end the violence against all… especially the vulnerable!
Integrity, alas, starts at home…
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