Technology, Ethics, and the Pandemic: Responses from Key Accounting Actors

Abstract

A pandemic is an exceptional context involving radical disruptions for organizations and society. Ethical considerations evolve among individuals and organizations, and the way technology is used is an important factor in this evolution. We explore how key actors in the accounting space—namely, the Big 4 firms, the professional accounting associations, and the audit regulators—responded to the conjunction of the pandemic, ethics, and technology. We contextualize our documentation analysis referring to the ETHOs framework, which integrates ethics and technology. Findings suggest that ethics and technology are significant for the professional accounting associations and the audit regulators during the pandemic. In contrast, the Big 4 appear to overlook this importance, focusing instead on gains to be obtained from technology, applying a commercial logic above a professional logic. Our study underscores the importance of considering ethics in the future design and utilization of technology to maintain trust in the accounting profession. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cites in the text.