Last year’s culture review of the audit division produced 10 recommendations aimed at tightening leadership capability and shoring up support for new recruits. That review called for tailored training for managers, more structured onboarding for junior staff and formal ethical decision-making workshops featuring “peer-led” ethics discussions.
KPMG’s internal people and inclusion team ran the process, building on an earlier examination by Principia Advisory. Principia had first been brought in after a scandal in which audit staff were caught cheating on internal tests.
Questions about whether those cultural clean-up efforts have real bite now hang over the firm. A whistleblower has alleged widespread data misuse across the audit division, raising concerns that systems and behaviours did not match the ethics messaging.
Senior executives have acknowledged they did not handle the complaint appropriately and that the investigation stalled for around two years. That timeline undercuts confidence in KPMG’s governance procedures and the effectiveness of earlier culture work.
KPMG has turned again to Principia Advisory, this time to run a fresh review focused specifically on its “speak-up culture”. The new mandate aims to understand why staff felt unsafe or unsupported when raising concerns.
The firm now accepts that workshops and internal reviews are not enough if whistleblowers believe their reports go nowhere. How Principia assesses the gap between KPMG’s public ethics push and its internal response to the complaint will shape the central test of the firm’s credibility.
