Do ethics and sustainability intersect? How is ethics, a theoretical moral standard, used to resolve the critical challenges of environmental sustainability? With diverse backgrounds and variegated viewpoints of people and interest groups, how could effective solutions to the complex existential threats to the environment be resolved? As CPAs, how can we contribute and enable solutions to the ethical sustainability of our environment? What are the ethics and sustainability issues in the CPA profession and what interventions may be proposed?
The answers are not simple and arguably not easy.
The only logical way is a collaboration of people and groups to design a practical framework for action. Ethics as moral anchor enables the harmonization of the discordant and disparate views so that all voices are heard. It facilitates thinking together in resolving hot-button issues affecting the relationship of the living and non-living actors and elements in the ecosystem such as plants, animals and future generations.
The individual’s ethics and sense of right and wrong provide a lens and moral compass for their decision-making process. An ethical approach depicts how connected the world is and how actions in one place can impact communities around the globe like climate change and global warming. This provides benefits to all current and future stakeholders and societies that preserve the environment.
A rational mindset and systems thinking are useful strategies to ensure that the collaborative effort will take everyone’s needs into account. Although there are endemic difficulties applying ethics to sustainability challenges, the final solution will be more relevant and cognizant of the needs of multiple parties instead of based solely on one group’s needs and opinions.
Failing to collaborate to conserve and protect the natural environment could come back to haunt societies and peoples. Clean water, air, biodiversity, species health, rivers and forests, if neglected, have precipitously wrought massive vengeance on the community order. Current examples are prolonged drought, calamitous floods, devastating erosions, and environmental pollutions.
However, the application of ethics is sometimes met with hesitation and lukewarm reaction when pursuing sustainable development. A typical challenge is the allocation of scarce resources that leaves out certain vulnerable groups. The slashing of funds for education affecting social sustainability is another case in point.
Ironically, the only sustainable choice may be less desirable and more costly but is necessary to make ethical improvements that will do more good or less harm for the greater majority. But such utilitarian notion, while debatably acceptable, trumps the more primordial human rights of the marginalized minority.
Altruistically, sustainability initiatives have gained a more ethical approach today. The value of offering all beings, living and non-living, some level of moral consideration, is crucial. The rapid growth of development requires a critical pause to account for all stakeholders at risk when making a decision.
Ethical sustainability must be based on three major pillars – social, environmental, and economic. How humans ought to live and to consider their connections with other humans, the natural world, the future generations, the costs and benefits is crucial in lessening and avoiding the marginalization, unjust and unfair treatment of certain groups and their ecosystems.
CPAs also face difficult and unique ethical and sustainability questions in their practice sectors. Under constantly changing regulatory, competitive, technological, economic, and social environments, their very own reason for being and professional practice, in relation with their living publics and natural environment are continuously tested. They need to refresh and retool their competencies in tackling existential issues, which current academic training has not amply provided them.
They need to apply total systems approach linking ethics and sustainability to the challenges of the professional environment. Differing views from big and small stakeholders should be heard and not dismissed. As a human system, it must operate in accord with natural laws. The law of the universe (karma) where everything that we put in comes back is operative. The law of responsibility dictates not only a responsibility for ourselves but for others and those around us. And the law of connection where living and non-living things have a natural connection for mutual survival. This “circular” and “karmic” relationship is crucial in developing solutions to sustainability problems.
For example, accounting educators fundamentally prepare warm bodies for all sectors. In return, practitioners teach part-time and share expertise in the schools, symbiotically benefitting the profession. Moreover, transparent, ethical and competent accountants enhance the growth of the profession.
Two final existential threats to consider: the notable dwindling of accounting students’ intake and low licensure passing rates are concerning that require systems thinking to identify strategic interventions. A collaborative review of the accounting syllabi to tighten crucial topics including sustainability knowledge and training, and to minimize extraneous topics is a potential attraction for students. Furthermore, a systemic review of the licensure subjects benchmarking with US accountancy practice of only 4 major areas, instead of 6 may open new corridors for enhancing the ethical sustainability of the profession.
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Dr. Cesar Azurin Mansibang is President/CEO and Chairman of the Board of a huge manufacturing company. He is also a long-time graduate school professor, management consultant, and practitioner.