Personal Ethics for Professional Accountants
Presenters : Nestene Botha CA(SA)
Overview
The modern accounting environment relies heavily on professional work that outsiders can rarely verify. As financial professionals advance into senior roles, fewer peers meaningfully review their technical opinions, valuations, tax representations and audit file conclusions. When nobody is watching, the ultimate line of defense for the public interest is not just a written rulebook but the individual practitioner’s own standards.
This reliance on personal judgment is currently facing its greatest technological challenge. Across South Africa, court judgments from the last three years reveal a disturbing trend: artificial intelligence-related citation and compilation failures are escalating rapidly from junior staff to senior directors, disciplinary chairpersons and even judicial officers. This is not merely a failure of technical competence; it is a direct test of integrity, disclosure and professional due care in an era where AI produces novel dilemmas faster than any written code can address them.
Join Nestene Botha CA(SA) for a high-impact session that treats personal ethics as a defined, measurable professional competency. You will examine real South African case law, unpack your own ethical blind spots under pressure and acquire a defensible, highly practical framework that balances technological efficiency with absolute compliance.
Learning objectives
Attending this webinar will equip you with the following skills:
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Distinguish personal, business, and professional ethics, identifying precisely where the IESBA Code stops and personal judgment must take over.
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Apply classic ethical frameworks as practical decision-making tools to identify your dominant reasoning style and its associated blind spots.
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Analyse recent South African AI-related professional failures, separating honest competence limitations from core integrity and professional behavior breaches.
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Implement six specific AI obligations flowing directly from the IESBA Code, covering disclosure, source verification, POPIA-compliant data protection and working-paper recording.
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Complete a structured ethics self-assessment that aligns with output-based CPD policies, leaving with a dated commitment and two immediately adoptable workplace policy documents.
Content
The webinar will cover the following topics in detail:
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The Three Tiers of Ethical Responsibility and the Crucial Role of Personal Ethics
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Ethical Theory as a Practical Decision-Making Framework
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The AI Pressure Test: South African Case Law, Case Studies, and Regulatory Responses
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Governance, Disclosure, POPIA, and Practice-Level Standards
