CPA axes compliance roles despite accounting industry scandals
A major professional accounting body insists cuts to its compliance team, amid the fallout from the PwC scandal, won’t have a material impact.
One of the country's main professional accounting bodies, CPA Australia, has axed roles in its compliance team despite growing concerns over the industry's ability to regulate itself in the wake of the PwC scandal.
Capital Brief has confirmed that CPA Australia, which embarked on a major redundancy round last year, has cut from its ‘professional conduct team’, tasked with scrutinising the activities of its public practitioners.
The number of jobs this affects at CPA is unclear, with the body expected to provide answers on notice to questions posed at a parliamentary hearing last week. It insists the cuts will have no impact on its own internal compliance.
But Labor Senator Deborah O’Neill, a key force in exposing the PwC scandal last year, believes a culture of self-regulation in the sector has “manifestly failed to prevent or adequately disincentivise poor behaviour”.
