EY has fired dozens of US staff for what the accounting and consulting firm called cheating on professional training courses, sparking an internal debate about business ethics and the limits of multitasking.
The dismissals took place last week after an investigation found that some employees had attended more than one online training class at a time during the “EY Ignite Learning Week” in May.
Several of the fired employees said they did not believe they were violating EY policy and were just trying to take advantage of interesting sessions that ranged from “How strong is your digital brand in the marketplace?” to “Conversing with AI, one prompt at a time”.
The sessions counted towards the 40 continuing professional education credits that EY required employees to complete in a year. The firm determined that watching two at a time amounted to an ethical breach.
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“Our core values of integrity and ethics are at the forefront of everything we do,” EY said. “Appropriate disciplinary action was recently taken in a small number of cases where individuals were found to be in violation of our global code of conduct and US learning policy.”
The Big Four firms have been taking a tougher approach to policing the professional training of their staff after a series of cheating scandals.
The issue is particularly sensitive at EY, which in 2022 paid the largest-ever fine for such lapses – $100 million (€92 million) to the US Securities and Exchange Commission – after hundreds of accounting staff shared answers on professional tests, including ethics exams, and firm leaders withheld details from regulators.
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One consultant who was fired last Friday said there was no warning that watching multiple sessions simultaneously was not allowed. “Their emails marketing EY Ignite actually encouraged us to join as many sessions as our schedule allowed,” the person said. “We all work with three monitors. I was hoping to hear new ideas that I could bring to the table to separate myself from others.”
A second person who lost their job said EY “breeds a culture of multitasking”, adding: “If you are forced to bill 45 hours a week and do many more hours of internal work, how can it not?”
A third person said: “I know a partner who will do two [client] calls and switch their camera on and off depending on who he is talking to. If this is unethical, then that is unethical, too.”
Some staff reacted to the latest firings by calling them a disproportionately severe response. They also questioned whether EY itself was responsible for using a system that allowed staff to open multiple Zoom sessions and that counted overlapping CPE credits, according to a review of posts on the private employee messaging service Fishbowl.
EY’s response was “just bizarre”, said one commenter. “Perhaps reduce their rating, deduct bonus, or even delay promo, but simply terminating them effective immediately is just cruel ... If this was so important, then implement better systems.”
EY changed the way it promoted EY Ignite events after beginning its investigation of this year’s learning week.
An email about a two-day programme of sessions focused on markets and generative artificial intelligence in August included a warning at the bottom that employees were “expected to complete this learning activity with integrity, including being present for all content and class interactions”.
“You should not take any other learning while completing this activity,” the email read. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024
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