Experts to Discuss Emerging Technology, Ethical Decision Making, Burnout and More at Canadian Anti-Fraud Conference

Hundreds of anti-fraud professionals will hear from director and CEO of FINTRAC Sarah Paquet, tech journalist Takara Small, Gold AE whistleblower Andre Gauthier and more at the virtual 2021 ACFE Fraud Conference Canada, November 7-10.

One of the speakers, Garth Sheriff, CPA, CA, CIA, will discuss the pivotal role psychological safety plays in preventing fraud in organizations. Sheriff, the founder of Sheriff Consulting, told the ACFE that employees need to have psychological safety in order to maintain an ethical culture. “Psychological safety is a shared belief that a team and organization are safe for interpersonal risk-taking,” Sheriff said. “There are numerous examples … in which pervasive low psychological safety within an organization can cause an individual's ethical decision-making system, or that provided by their profession, to retreat in fear.”   

Sheriff cited Wirecard and Boeing as two prime examples of organizations that suffered due to a failure to provide a psychologically safe environment. “Boeing in particular is an example of an organization that had high psychological safety. Specifically, with their aircraft production quality control, managers were empowered and encouraged to speak up when they identified issues,” he said. When a new executive team came in and changed the organization’s practices and goals, disaster ensued. “The tragic result of this cultural change was the engineering failures of the Boeing Max 737 leading to two plane crashes and lives lost. Psychological safety starts with the tone of the top and must be consistently assessed, maintained and improved.”

Conference attendees will also hear from experts on topics ranging from preventing cybercrime while working from home and intellectual property theft to how corruption fueled Canada’s housing bubble and the importance of whistleblowing during the pandemic.