Thematic Symposium: The Impact of Technology on Ethics, Professionalism and Judgement in Accounting
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EDITORIAL
Thematic Symposium: The Impact of Technology on Ethics, Professionalism and Judgement in Accounting Sally Gunz1 · Linda Thorne2
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020
The call for this Thematic Symposium was ambitious and sweeping and deliberatively so. It acknowledged the historic bifurcation within the academic research of accounting decision making, the focus of which generally took one of two forms (Gaa and Thorne 2004); the technical and the ethical/ professional. While there are obvious reasons for this to be the case, the extraordinary growth in the application and role of technology in replacing basic accounting functions, makes it particularly pressing for academic energy to focus on basic questions that arise out of the interaction between the two components. Accountants and auditors have increased the use of technology in decision making in an effort to standardize and control the flow of information in the firm, as a response to the increased globalization of their clients, and, at times, to affect cost savings through the use of off-shore employees. Technology was initially adopted in order to enhance the effectiveness and accuracy of accounting decision making. While forecasts may well be exaggerated, some reports in the media and by PWC have suggested that by 2030 between 40 and 90% of all accounting functions will be replaced by technology (PWC 2017; Maney 2016). Technology has undoubted benefits but also consequences. Of particular concern to those who address ethical considerations in the workplace is what has become known as a responsibility gap; that is, the extent to which or the possibility that the adoption of technology will lead to the abdication of ethical responsibility for the consequences of decisions by real people, and here, accountants and taxpayers. * Linda Thorne [email protected] Sally Gunz [email protected] 1
School of Accounting and Finance, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada
Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto, Canada
2
More specifically, Johnson (2015) suggests that technology actually encourages the abdication of responsibility because there is a failure to trigger the ethical concerns involved in the decision. He argues this occurs because of several factors. Most notably technology is treated as if it has an immutable authority. Ignoring a technology induced responsibility gap is problematic because the information relied upon by accounting professionals depends upon the integrity of the data input used to formulate actual decisions and audit opinions (PWC 2017). The responsibility gap draws attention to the question of who is responsible for the integrity of the data as well as the decisions formulated by technological means. It further raises the importance of whether and how ethical/ professional considerations are to be integrated in devising what appear to be purely technical processes. If they are not, should they be and, if so, how should they be? Many have considered the adoption of technology to be a panacea to the issue
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