Now, when I say you're looking for an out for the public interest, I want you to be very cognizant of at least 5 main construct. Professionalism, objectivity, integrity, competence and diligence. This is why I like that motif of the audit professionals being a superhero. As you are not only technically competent, but you have these other really cool high value attributes that you display in a humble manner. So let's walk through a few of these principles, starting with professionalism. The AICPA Code of Professional Conduct emphasizes that all auditors must serve the public interest, honor the public trust, and demonstrate commitment to professionalism. Public here includes clients, investors, governments, creditors, in the broader financial community. Now, you must serve this community with a high degree of commitment and high degree of honor. In fact, it says in the AICPA Code of Conduct that you must balance and navigate conflicting objectives and pressures, using principles of integrity, objectivity, and do professional care. It's not a mystery. You are navigating your relationship with client management who wants to usually have the highest possible that income, highest assets, lowest liabilities, they want their performance to look good. On the other hand, you have present and potential investors, as well as present and potential lenders who are relying on those financial statements and the last thing many of them would want is for you to have financial statements with overstated assets, understated liabilities, and overstated income. So, it's a conflict and you're navigating this and this it takes a special person. Let's talk about integrity. Now, I am not pretending at this age in your walk, you're probably late teens, early 20s, 30s, or 40s somewhere in that range, maybe older, I can't say, hey, you should have integrity, as if I have authority in any sense of the word over you. I don't pretend that at all. But what I am telling you, for you to be the best accounting professional, auditing professional, you should think very, very carefully about undertaking actions and using words that connote integrity. You would love to have the reputation of integrity among your friends and especially your professional acquaintances. So, what is this? Well, this is old as ethics that maybe you didn't hear about in the home, in one way or another, or maybe in some of your ethical training maybe even religious training, but even if it's not religious training, many, many world views hold as a core value integrity. It's an element of your character, an equality from which the public derives trust and it's the ultimate benchmark used in assessing the quality of a member's decisions. It entails true, true cool attributes, honesty, candidness, and attention to the constraint of confidentiality. And integrity, and this really goes back to this incommensurable good idea, it subordinates one's own gain and advantage to the public interest. I hope you can see that if the audit profession is acting this way, that this would be the oil that lubricates our economy. On the other hand, if the audit profession itself is shown to be lacking in integrity, then capital markets can grind to a halt. The transactions cost can be very high and it might be really a long time before you see companies wanting to go public again, because no one will trust their financial statements. Let's talk about another couple of key principles. Objectivity and Independence. If you're an AICPA member, American Institute of Certified Public Accountant, you must maintain objectivity. That means disinterested. You can be very, very interested, but disinterested of course means, you don't have any skin in the game one way or another and free of conflicts of interests that would create bias, either at the conscious or subconscious level. So, let's look at objectivity and independence a little bit more carefully. So, when it comes to independence, you have to be independent in fact says the standards and in appearance. So, there're more rules about independence and I have time here today to go over in this video context with you. They are very, very numerous and they would relate to things about, can you own stock in an audit? Can you get a loan from an audit, can your spouse get a loan, can your close family member get loan? There's a long, long list of rules and when it comes time to sit for that CPA exam you should brush up on those rules. My own view is that they tend to be too numerous and what I like to think about is the concept. So, to be independence in fact, you need to be objective. That's the state of mind entailing impartiality, intellectual honesty, and being disinterested. Independence, in appearance, is something that we can regulate and independence in fact, is what we really want.
