We recall seeing something on r/Big4 last week about an EY employee — rather, former EY employee — getting canned for overdoing it on the CPE, possibly this one from nine days ago:
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Well now Financial Times is reporting a bunch of people got swept up in a wave of CPE policing centered around their taking multiple courses at the same time during EY Ignite Learning Week in May. “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,” said one of them to FT. Mission accomplished?
The recently shitcanned “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’,” said FT.
As we know, the EY organization is extra sensitive to cheating after they received a record $100 million fine from the SEC in 2022. In that instance it wasn’t so much the cheating itself that got the SEC so worked up but the fact that EY knew of it happening and failed to inform the SEC of such when the SEC asked “are your people sharing answers?” Also that they weren’t just sharing answers on CPE, they were using an exploit that would give out a passing score even if you only answered one question right. “Many professionals acknowledged during the firm’s investigation that they knew their conduct violated EY’s Code of Conduct, but they cheated because of work commitments or an inability to pass training exams after multiple attempts,” read the SEC’s order. Hmm, we’re sensing a theme here.
Apparently the firm did warn staff not to take multiple sessions at once in this most recent case — some of the former EYers speaking out disputed this — but whether they did or not, staff were just demonstrating that go-getter culture of the Big 4. “EY ‘breeds a culture of multitasking’, said one of the axed employees to FT. “If you are forced to bill 45 hours a week and do many more hours of internal work, how can it not?”
“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,” said another. Are we sure the partner isn’t overemployed?
Would giving people two weeks off to complete their required 40 hours of CPE perhaps begin to address this pervasive issue once and for all?
EY fires staff who took multiple online training courses at once [Financial Times]