The CEO of KPMG Australia has stepped down following an inquiry into the firm’s response to a whistleblower’s claims.
Today, KPMG announced that its chair, Martin Sheppard, has accepted the immediate resignation of CEO Andrew Yates.
Additionally, Julian McPherson, KPMG’s national managing partner for audit and assurance, will also leave his position immediately and plans to resign after completing his client-related responsibilities.
Sheppard stated that the law firm Allens will continue to look into the whistleblower’s allegations. Meanwhile, KPMG has enlisted the help of Principia Advisory, renowned experts in ethical organizational culture, to conduct an independent review of the company’s policies and processes to encourage open communication.
“KPMG is dedicated to transparency and will release the results of the Principia review. We are prepared to quickly implement their recommendations,” Sheppard declared.
He also assured, “We are enhancing and tightening the safeguards that ensure client confidentiality. We will clearly communicate to our clients the specific measures we are implementing to secure their information. For each of our audit clients, we will verify that any conduct issues do not compromise the quality of their audits.”
Sheppard said he knew KPMG would have to work on rebuilding trust.
“That’s why we are not asking anyone to take our word for it, and we are inviting scrutiny and challenge on our remedial actions,” he said.
The whistleblower’s initial allegations about the inappropriate internal sharing of client information were not substantiated by an initial internal investigation or an external legal review of that investigation.
However, KPMG acknowledged that the initial investigation “was not conducted with the necessary rigour”.
The whistleblower then approached several KPMG Australia board members, and “others”, which prompted the Allens review.
