Regional finance professionals discuss ethical standards in Bahrain

Finance professionals working in Bahrain and the Middle East have been urged to ensure that they continue working to the highest ethical standards in order to avoid the scandals that have hit other regions, with ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) pledging to support them in helping to restore any lost trust in the financial sector.
A networking event organized by ACCA in Manama heard from Abdul-Hussain bin Ali Mirza, minister of state for electricity and water affairs, an accountant himself by training. He said that the accountancy profession still felt repercussions following the financial scandals of the past decade on a daily basis and he voiced his concern that more problems may still be uncovered. Those scandals had, he said, led to a “general loss of trust and confidence in exactly the supposed ‘guardian’ of corporate transparency and integrity — the auditor.”
One of the senior finance professionals to attend the event was Adnan Hashim, CFO of NCB Capital, a fellow of ACCA, who said: “Trust comes with time and must begin from within.
We are seeing a huge change in expectations placed on finance professionals who are not only expected to provide data but to also provide analysis and insight to enhance business decisions, measure corporate performance, and engage in strategy formulation.
In order to gain the trust of both business and the regulator it is essential to maintain a high level of transparency in all financial matters and exposures.”
ACCA’s Regional Director for MENASA Stuart Dunlop underlined the work the body was doing and said that ACCA professionals were expected to adhere to the highest standards, including blowing the whistle on unethical practice in the organization for which they worked — even if that action might negatively impact on their future prospects.
He stressed that ethics and integrity was at the heart of ACCA's competency framework. He said that these qualities had been identified as being critical by employers in a recent survey of finance leaders from around the world.
The vast majority of chief financial officers (CFOs) looking to appoint new staff for their businesses believed it was important for each potential employee to have both a breadth and depth of finance expertise and capabilities, with 94 percent saying it was important to have a good understanding of professionalism and ethics.