We implement comprehensive risk, compliance, and data-privacy measures—and have established strong guidelines for how we operate as individuals—to foster a culture of excellence, responsibility, and accountability. This diligent governance helps us—both as a firm and as people who work for Deloitte—embody our Purpose and Shared Values.
We are committed to earning the trust of our clients and public, and aim to serve the interests of both with integrity.
Maintaining ethics and transparency
Our Code of Conduct is the ethical compass for everything we do. Ethics and integrity is not negotiable at Deloitte. Likewise, our Supplier Code of Conduct outlines the fundamental principles and expectations for companies with which we do business.
According to the overwhelming majority of respondents to our latest internal ethics survey, Deloitte is an ethical place to work. We continually reinforce this ethical culture by enhancing awareness and promoting transparency. For one, our people are required to complete training on topics including anti-harassment, anti-discrimination, and financial-crime prevention. Further, to reinforce a speak-up culture, our ethics helpline allows for direct, confidential reporting of behaviours that do not align with our Code of Conduct or other policies.
We review everything we receive via our various ethics-reporting channels in detail, and take appropriate actions to address substantiated breaches of our Code of Conduct and policies.
Our latest Transparency report provides an overview of our legal structure, as well as our governance, ethical, and independence principles, and quality-control procedures. It also outlines the course of action we’ve put in place to continually advance audit quality, and to support our commitment to upholding public trust and leading the profession as a trusted institution.
Upholding public trust
As a regulated entity, Deloitte holds a distinct and respected position in the business realm. The markets rely on the audit work we perform for public and private organizations. Along with this privilege of holding the public’s confidence comes the responsibility to safeguard our brand through effective risk-management practices and through independence—from how we serve our clients to how we manage our personal financial relationships. Our regulators continue to assess our compliance results and expect us to meet our obligations, collectively and individually.
Central to our competitiveness is the unwavering commitment to uphold the firm’s reputation for integrity, quality, and independence. Demonstrating professional skepticism and objectivity, we actively work in the best interests of our clients and communities.
As we expand into various business areas and products, in conjunction with rapid advancements in AI technologies, the process of accepting clients and mandates becomes more sophisticated. Emerging business opportunities often raise questions concerning their alignment with our Purpose and the public interest. Consequently, the decision to engage, restrict, or decline such relationships requires multiple perspectives.
To address this, we have established detailed processes for determining the acceptability of client engagements—which include, when applicable, consultations by practitioners with various subject-matter-expert teams in the firm.
As our business engagements and relationships unfold, our teams gain a deep understanding of the significance of maintaining both personal and professional independence. Collaborating with various entities makes adhering to the latter imperative; this is guided by both industry standards and regulatory requirements. Our foremost aim is to safeguard Deloitte’s reputation and brand while supporting our business strategy.
To ensure we meet the highest standards of work quality, we employ robust risk and compliance processes. We maintain objectivity regarding the services we deliver, a crucial aspect in upholding trust and fulfilling the commitments we make to one another, our clients, regulators, and the communities we serve.
As professionals, preserving personal independence remains a paramount responsibility for us. It reflects our unflagging commitment to being the initial safeguard in upholding our reputation, integrity, and credibility. To ensure adherence to our independence policies, we foster a culture of support through coaching and learning, year-round compliance reinforcement, and annual compliance checks for our team members. These measures empower our people to effectively meet the requirements of our independence protocols.
Public Interest Committee and the company we keep
Our Public Interest Committee exists to help our leaders navigate critical ethical and brand considerations as to whether the work we are doing—and who we are doing that work for—is in the public interest, holds up to our “company we keep” principles, and elevates our brand. FY2024 was an active year in Canada, Chile, and beyond, with Canada having an influential public interest voice at the global table.
We addressed various themes, including ensuring the work we were considering was aligned with our refreshed RAP. We declined an engagement in the agricultural arena for which we felt the work being contemplated was not aligned with our WorldClimate initiative—our global strategy to address climate change.
We worked closely with the Future of Canada Centre to help frame the positioning of Canada’s common ground; to produce a survey on the state of unity in Canada; to address the consequences for private and public sector organizations; and to explore the potential for common purpose.
Finally, our Public Interest Committee evolved to include an even more diverse group of leaders, helping to ensure our commitment to leading with Purpose.
Business continuity and emergency services
The security officer, reporting to the risk officer, is dedicated first and foremost to ensuring the safety of our people and all our visitors. This is reflected in our commitment to secure our premises through access and event management, as well as to support our travellers domestically and internationally—which, together, are the building blocks of our business continuity protocols.
Our member firm, Deloitte Canada and Chile, has also developed business continuity protocols that are regularly tested and certified annually under ISO 22301, the international standard regulating such situations. We use the breadth of our capabilities and the geographic dispersion across our many locations and businesses to create redundancies we can exploit if/when needed. Each of our critical businesses defines its maximum acceptable service-outage limits, along with plans to adhere to these limits. Additionally, supply chains are regularly reviewed and strengthened to minimize dependencies and help ensure alternative sources of goods and services. We work with those in our business alliances, and with our vendors, to help ensure our business continuity requirements are consistent with their capabilities.
Generative AI and data protection
In the rapidly evolving landscape of GenAI, our commitment to protecting personal information and ensuring the confidentiality of client data remains paramount. For example, the emergence of innovative tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Llama—which offer not only opportunities for productivity but also challenges that require vigilance and strict adherence to our professional responsibilities—underscores the imperative of ethical, accountable, and inclusive development of AI systems.
In response to these challenges, we have designed and implemented AI practices-based on our framework of trustworthy and ethical AI, and founded on trust, ethical practices, and a steadfast commitment to privacy and confidentiality. This framework serves as our guide to identifying and mitigating potential AI-related risks along the AI life cycle, emphasizing key principles such as accountability, fairness, privacy, security, reliability, and transparency. As such, it helps us ensure our engagement with GenAI technologies not only boosts efficiency and productivity, but also aligns with our commitment to data protection and ethical standards.
We maintain a rigorous review process for GenAI technologies to ensure they align with our policies and ethical AI principles. This includes preventing AI models from learning from user inputs, restricting developers’ access to data, and a steadfast commitment to privacy and confidentiality. We also prohibit the upload of confidential information to unapproved platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini, backed by the robust use of data loss protection technologies and firm-wide training to safeguard client data, privacy, and security. Our GenAI governance framework, therefore, helps ensure we not only meet but exceed client expectations and applicable regulations.
For an overview of how Deloitte protects personal information, please refer to our Privacy Statement.