The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, ACCA, is a global professional accountancy body. The copyright line of its report "Navigating ethics for trust" is dated October 2026. The report brings together survey findings and roundtable insights "to show where ethical pressure is being felt most clearly, where support is needed, and where ACCA can and does make the greatest contribution." Its 2026 findings, it says, show that artificial intelligence "now sits firmly at the centre of the ethical agenda."
The use of AI, in its words, "ranks first in the top three ethical challenges reported by respondents." The same sentence goes on, "but the evidence supports a balanced and constructive reading."
Parts of the report follow, not the whole.
AI, Human Accountability, and Transparency
"AI is now part of mainstream everyday professional work," its section on AI begins. Its research, it says, consistently identifies the same pressure points, which it lists as "overreliance, weak verification, unclear accountability, confidentiality risks, limited explainability, and inadequate governance."
Respondents recognize the value in AI use, the report says, "but the roundtables and open-ended responses are clear that responsibility remains human." Outputs prepared with AI, it says, "still require review, challenge, documentation, and the ability to explain how conclusions were reached." Where a judgment informed by AI "cannot be explained, evidenced and defended, it weakens both accountability and trust."
Roundtable participants, the report says, consistently framed accountability as inseparable from documentation. One participant stressed that users need to "verify and take responsibility of the output of the tool before you share it."
An output that reads well is the easiest one to pass on without checking it.
A Checklist for AI Use
The report includes a practical prompt checklist for ethical challenges involving AI use. It is meant to help individual professional accountants "consider how AI use may affect compliance with the fundamental principles," with prompts "to support reflection, further review, and documentation." AI use, it says, may affect "integrity, objectivity, professional competence and due care, confidentiality, and professional behaviour," as well as "human accountability for the final advice, decision or output."
Its example is an accountant who uses AI to summarize a technical accounting issue and drafts advice for a client based on that summary. The ethical challenge, the report says, "is not merely that AI was used," but whether the characteristics of the tool or system affect "the reliability, explainability, consistency, accountability, or appropriateness of relying on the output."
The prompts are statements an accountant answers yes or no, in groups that include context and reliance, understanding and explainability, and verification and evidence. Under verification and evidence, the instruction after a yes reads "verify the output, test the basis for the result, document further work and do not rely on appearance or fluency as evidence of quality."
The checklist sets its own limits. "It is not a separate process, a substitute for the IESBA Code, applicable laws and regulations, internal policies, or professional judgement." Nor, it says, is it a review of an organization's governance of AI, or an enterprise risk assessment. The code it names, the International Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants, comes from the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants.
The checklist is written for the person using the tool. Whether a firm can later show that the person used it is a separate question.
Who Should Act
Among its priority recommendations, the report asks for ethical capability to be built for technology-enabled work, as a shared responsibility. Professional bodies and educators, it says, "should strengthen learning on AI use, technology risk, scepticism, and judgement." Employers and firms, it says, should establish "clear policies, controls and lines of accountability for the use of AI and related technologies." And policymakers and standard setters should continue updating principles-based standards and guidance "to ensure they remain workable as technology develops."