ANTI-MONEY LAUNDERING – FOR THE ATTENTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF ACCOUNTANTS

Nowadays, in the context of interconnected economies, the phenomenon of money laundering and terrorist financing has escalated, with a direct impact in Romania as well. The European Union has intensified the fight against this phenomenon, which risks making the financial system vulnerable, through the 4th and 5th European Directives, which extend the professional obligations of accounting experts and financial auditors in the field of preventing and combating money laundering and terrorist financing. Because professional accountants must act in the public interest, IFAC has developed a guide that supports professional accountants in their efforts to limit the phenomenon of corruption and money laundering at an international level.

Bar Authorities and Prosecutors

The professional regulation of U.S. prosecutors is primarily the responsibility of state judiciaries, which regulate all attorneys, including prosecutors, through the adoption and interpretation of professional conduct rules and by enforcing these rules in the attorney discipline process. Although Bar associations have no formal role in regulating prosecutors, they wield informal influence by drafting and interpreting the professional conduct rules that state judiciaries adopt and by publishing standards that offer guidance to prosecutors. Ultimately, professional regulation has limited practical significance for U.S. prosecutors because many professional conduct rules are inapplicable or minimally applicable to their work, and because those rules that do apply (such as those governing attorneys’ advocacy) are uncontroversial and largely coextensive with constitutional law and other law governing prosecutorial misconduct. The rules do not significantly address prosecutors’ charging and plea bargaining decisions—controversial areas of practice relegated to prosecutorial discretion—and do not codify some professional expectations, such as those regarding prosecutors’ heightened duty of candor, that are expressed in court decisions and in unenforceable guidelines. Occasionally, the Bar has tried to persuade courts to adopt more demanding rules for prosecutors or to interpret existing rules more demandingly. Prosecutors have generally opposed these efforts, which have achieved limited success while exacerbating tensions between prosecutors and the Bar. Consequently, professional conduct rules do not fully capture the conventional understanding that prosecutors have a unique professional role that gives rise to different and, in some respects, more demanding professional obligations than those of other lawyers. The professional conduct rules have only limited influence and do not constrain some of prosecutors’ most controversial and troublesome decisions and behaviors.

The Effect of Staff Auditor Reputation on Audit Quality Enhancing Actions

Auditors often face situations in which acting on their professional obligations comes with potential personal costs. Drawing upon the Theory of Reputation in Organizations, we predict that perceived costs associated with these actions are lower for auditors with positive reputations, which in turn influences their actions. In our first experiment, participants perceive that auditors with negative reputations face a more constrained choice set when anticipating a budget overage. Further, participants perceive that those with positive reputations are more likely to proactively report the overage and less likely to underreport hours worked, a result mediated by the anticipated impact on evaluations for "speaking up." In a second experiment, we manipulate reputation in a live simulation and demonstrate a causal link between reputation and auditors' skeptical action. Taken together, our experiments provide evidence that an auditor's perceived reputation influences their choice to engage in audit quality enhancing behaviors.

A Scenario-based Approach to Teaching Professionalism to Medical Students (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Doctors play a key role in individuals’ lives undergoing a holistic integration into local communities. To maintain public trust, it is essential that professional values are upheld by both doctors and medical students. OBJECTIVE We aimed to ensure that students appreciated these professional obligations during the 3-year science-based, preclinical course with limited patient contact. METHODS An interactive professionalism course entitled ‘Entry to the Profession’ was designed for pre-clinical first year medical students. Two scenario-based sessions were created and evaluated utilizing established professionalism guidance and expert consensus. Quantitative and qualitative feedback on course implementation and development of professionalism was gathered through Likert-type five-point scales and debrief following course completion. RESULTS 70 students completed the Entry to the Profession course over a two-year period. Feedback regarding session materials and logistics ranged between (mean ± standard deviation) 4.16±0.93 (appropriateness of scenarios) to 4.66±0.61 (environment of sessions). Feedback pertaining to professionalism knowledge and behaviours ranged between 3.11±0.99 (need for professionalism) to 4.78±0.42 (relevance of professionalism). Qualitative feedback revealed that a small group format in a relaxed, open environment facilitated discussion of the major concepts of professionalism. CONCLUSIONS Entry to the Profession employed an innovative approach to introducing first-year medical students to complex professionalism concepts. Future longitudinal investigations should aim to explore its impact at various stages of preclinical, clinical and postgraduate training. CLINICALTRIAL NA

Examining secondary teachers' practical rationality of mathematical modeling

Research on mathematical modeling is growing rapidly in the field of mathematics education, and there are numerous benefits of engaging students in modeling activities. However, mathematical modeling is still marginalized in mathematics instruction. In order to understand the challenges and obstacles secondary teachers face to incorporate modeling into their classrooms, this study drew upon the theoretical perspective of practical rationality. It used a breaching experiment survey of 176 secondary teachers in Missouri and follow-up interviews with six purposefully selected survey respondents to examine secondary teachers' norms and professional obligations related to mathematical modeling. After data collection, I used descriptive statistical analyses to examine the norms and applied the professional obligation framework to analyze teacher obligations. My findings confirmed four of the six hypothesized norms: Teachers tend to precisely identify which factors should be included in students' solutions, expect students to find a symbolic representation as their model, expect students to primarily work on politically neutral tasks, and are open to students doing model revisions. However, this study did not have robust enough evidence to confirm or disconfirm whether teachers tend to give students unambiguous directions about mathematical operations or components. Nor could it uncover whether students are expected to primarily engage in mathematical thinking rather than nonmathematical thinking during the modeling process. The findings also revealed that teachers' preferred actions among the scenarios presented were influenced by their perceived professional obligations, including commitments to individual students, the classroom's interpersonal dynamics, the practice of the mathematics discipline, and the institutions they work for. More specifically, disciplinary obligations featured most often in the survey responses of those teachers who complied with canonical actions. In contrast, those who selected noncanonical options (such as opening up the beginning phases of the modeling process) most often cited their obligations to individual student thinking to justify their survey responses. The findings suggested that the mathematics education community needs to increase awareness about complex and often conflicting teacher obligations related to mathematical modeling. To support teachers in enacting modeling, the field might consider qualified professional development, viable modeling tasks and tools, and a flexible schedule as well as opportunities to build shared understandings of disciplinary practices and obligations to students' individual needs.

The Daily Toil: Interactional Demands and Difficulties

This chapter explores the interactional demands placed on legal professionals. These include meeting the demands of clients, dealing with vulnerable clients and balancing the needs of clients with the ethical and professional obligations and requirements placed on legal professionals. It also explores the nature of many legal professional’s relationship with their colleagues, which can range from providing a supportive network to potentially creating a toxic working environment. In particular, it considers the way in which the structure of the legal profession results in those who succeed as lawyers being promoted to become managers, despite the potentially very different skillsets involved. This can lead to significant issues with mental health and wellbeing for both the team members involved and the manager themselves.