Did you hear about EY firing employees for taking too much CPE?
Back in May, during something called "Ignite Learning Week," EY offered virtual training sessions to help employees meet their CPE requirement despite their insanely busy schedules.
Some employees decided to multitask by attending multiple sessions at once to get through them faster. EY claimed this was an ethical breach that violated their code of conduct and fired them.
Those employees argued that they weren't warned multitasking would get them fired and that EY encouraged maximizing learning opportunities without specifying any restrictions.
I can't help but feel bad for them. As David Leary pointed out on The Accounting Podcast, these staff operate in a firm culture that demands multitasking. Everyone's juggling multiple projects on multiple monitors—it's all about efficiency, right?
It makes me wonder: How often are EY employees double-billing clients? Is that considered an ethical breach and a fireable offense?
You've got to hit those hourly billing minimums somehow. If working on two clients at the same time isn't ethical, maybe EY should audit their timesheets and see who's double-dipping there.
This CPE crackdown might be tied to EY's $100 million fine from the SEC in 2022 for employees cheating on ethics exams. Maybe hefty fines are the only way to get big firms to change their behavior.
Maybe if the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) started issuing similarly large fines for poor audit quality, the big firms would find a way to improve their audit quality.
What do you think? Should these employees have been fired? Or is EY being unfair?
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