The Canadian arm of PwC — one of the world’s largest accounting and consulting firms — has agreed to pay regulators more than $1 million after 1,200 employees were caught sharing or receiving answers for internal training tests.
The total includes a $750,000 (US) fine levied by the US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (CAOB), as well as $200,000 PwC Canada was ordered to pay by the Canadian Public Accountability Board (CPAB).
The employees — ranging from junior staff to directors and partner — had several shared drives on PwC’s computers where the answers were posted, according to CPAB.
“In addition, individuals also shared answers by sending emails with attached documents containing answers to training test questions, by providing answers in hard copy documents, or by discussing answers when taking tests in the presence of others,” CPAB said in a posting.
The answer-sharing went on from 2016 to 2020, before it was discovered by PwC, which then reported it to regulators. In late February, CPAB and CAOB each released the results of their own investigations, including the settlements with PwC.
In a written statement, PwC Canada CEO Nicolas Marcoux said the quality of audits performed by the company didn’t suffer as a result of the answer-sharing. Still, I have acknowledged that the affair could hurt PwC’s reputation.
“We expect more from everybody in our firm. All of us must consistently live our values and purpose for PwC Canada to be recognized as having the best people in professional services delivering the highest quality work,” said Marcoux. “We value the trust that our clients and community put in us, and we remain committed to ensuring that we continue to earn this trust every single day.”
Marcoux also said that some PwC employees were fired because of their roles in the answer-sharing, but he didn’t reveal how many, or at what level of the firm.
“We have since undertaken several remediation steps including retraining, additional ethics training, financial penalties, written warnings and terminations where warranted,” Marcoux said.
Both regulators praised PwC for self-reporting the answer-sharing, co-operating with investigators, and instituting changes to the testing system.
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