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The Issue

The AICPA Professional Ethics Executive Committee (PEEC) issued its Proposed 2027–2030 Strategic Plan, establishing four strategic initiatives intended to advance ethical behavior, strengthen trust in the CPA profession, and ensure that the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct remains relevant as the profession evolves. The strategy emphasizes high-quality ethical standards, implementation support, stakeholder engagement, and modernization of PEEC’s operating model.

PICPA generally supports the proposed strategy but believes it should more fully reflect the breadth of the CPA profession and the rapidly changing technology and business environment. Several aspects of the strategy appear to approach emerging issues primarily through an audit and attest lens, even though the Code applies to CPAs serving in many different roles.

Our Position

PICPA’s Professional Ethics Committee submitted comments supporting PEEC’s overall direction while recommending that the strategy take a broader and more forward-looking approach to the ethical challenges facing CPAs.

Among PICPA’s key recommendations, we encouraged PEEC to:

• Broaden the strategy beyond audit and attest. Ethical standards and PEEC’s strategic priorities should reflect the challenges facing CPAs throughout public accounting, business and industry, tax, government, education, and other professional roles.
• Address the ethical implications of AI and emerging technologies across the profession. CPAs increasingly develop, select, implement, oversee, and rely on technology. PICPA encouraged greater attention to issues involving validation and human oversight, confidentiality and data use, professional competence and due care, and pressures to implement technology before it is fit for purpose.
• Recognize the important role of CPAs in business and industry. As organizations implement AI and other emerging technologies, CPAs can bring integrity, objectivity, professional judgment, due care, and accountability to decisions involving technology, data governance, internal controls, and risk management.
• More explicitly address tax practitioners. AI and automation are rapidly changing tax research, compliance, return preparation, planning, and client service, creating new ethical considerations involving competence, confidentiality, verification of technology-generated information, and appropriate human oversight.
• Reconsider the Code’s definition of the “public interest.” PICPA recommended a more targeted concept focused on stakeholders who rely on CPAs’ expertise, integrity, objectivity, professional judgment, and the quality and reliability of the information and services they provide.
• Modernize the ethics enforcement model. PICPA encouraged PEEC to evaluate whether certain matters currently entering the Joint Ethics Enforcement Program could be more effectively addressed through peer review, state boards, regulators, or other appropriate mechanisms.
• Place greater emphasis on education, early intervention, and remediation. Accountability remains essential, but technology and data analytics may provide opportunities to identify problems earlier, communicate expectations, and facilitate corrective action. Formal disciplinary resources could then be concentrated on significant misconduct, repeated noncompliance, or failure to remediate.

Ultimately, PICPA believes PEEC’s strategic plan presents an opportunity to consider not only what ethical standards the profession needs, but how PEEC can most effectively promote ethical behavior in a rapidly changing profession. High-quality standards and meaningful accountability remain essential, but timely guidance, education, early intervention, and remediation can also help CPAs meet their ethical responsibilities and reinforce public trust in the profession.

Read the PICPA Comment Letter on AICPA Professional Ethics Executive Committee's Proposed 2027–2030 Strategic Plan