Topic Descriptions 2023

This document includes the following: 

• Ethics course descriptions
• Computer lab descriptions
• Workshop descriptions.

Ethics Courses:

You can choose from these options (choice of two for in-person; one is the virtual choice only - space is limited in all so register early):

Workshop 1a: In-Person - *full* Ethical Reasoning in a World of Differing Perspectives - with Tammy Towill, MBA, FCPA, FCMA

TAMMY TOWILL, MBA, FCPA, FCMA is a partner in the Cordura Group and Chair of the School of Business with Capilano University, providing business advisory services and related education and training programs to organizations and communities seeking growth or change. For over 25 years, Tammy has worked with private and public sector companies throughout North America and Europe, providing education, training and facilitating in the areas of leadership, strategy, business planning and curriculum development and implementation. She has served on and worked with several boards in Canada and the US.

Overview:

Our lens is incredibly powerful, but often it leads to strongly biased perspectives due to its unique nature. This session will leverage neuroscience findings as we seek to understand the impact of our conscious and unconscious mind on the decisions we make every day. This session enables the transferability and application of the acquired skills and knowledge to support leaders to achieve outcomes that ensure individual and organizational success in both the short and long term.

Applicable for CPAs and other business professionals.

Content:

• explore how our unique ways to experience the world shape the lens that we use to see and understand reality
• explore how our ethical frameworks can impact our decision making
• uncover the benefits, opportunities, and challenges of diversity and inclusion as they relate to the workplace
• challenge and uncover what ethics mean in a professional context and how our experiences, desires, values and traits drive our responses in times of conflict and stress
• apply specific techniques, tools, and strategies based on relevant business based scenarios to better enable you to consider the risks and opportunities associated with ethical reasoning in a world of differing perspectives.

Workshop 1b: In-Person - Ethical Leadership in an Age of AI - with Laura Friedrich, MSc, CIA, FCPA, FCGA

LAURA FRIEDRICH, MSc, CIA, FCPA, FCGA, is an executive director of a professional research, standards, and education consultancy firm with over 25 years of experience conducting projects worldwide. The firm helps build institutional capacity and develops strategic, policy, program, governance, and ethics guidance for established and emerging professional and regulatory organizations. Laura frequently authors and presents on topics such as the impact of disruptive technology on professional ethics; governance; sustainability and capacity development, with a focus on the future of professions. Laura is a Technical Advisor to the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants and chairs CPABC’s Bylaws Committee.

Overview:

CPAs have a leadership role to play in this era of disruptive technology. Advancements in artificial intelligence create strategic opportunities for organizations and raise unique ethics challenges for business leaders. In this session, we’ll highlight recent advancements in AI and explore how it can be expected to change our CPA roles. In particular, we’ll evaluate the ethical implications when facing challenging AI-related decisions, by framing these decisions in the context of the requirements of the CPA Code of Professional Conduct.

Course Description:

This interactive session will illustrate some of the recent advancements in AI and some of the expectations for the future. We’ll review key elements of frameworks being developed by organizations to design trust into the AI environment, and see how the principles in these frameworks relate to our CPA Code of Professional Conduct. Participants will evaluate a variety of scenarios and explore the implications of AI technologies on our role as ethical leaders.

Applicable for CPAs in any role and in all levels of organizational decision-making who have an interest in the ethics elements of technology-related decisions.

Learning Objectives:

• identify the ethics-based issues and challenges related to AI technologies
• analyze how AI provides opportunities to support ethical decision-making in organizations
• evaluate the ethics dimensions of AI decisions and determine appropriate actions using a systematic approach

Content:

• the current state of AI and where it is expected to go
• key ethics concerns and challenges for business leaders
• established principles and frameworks in ethical AI development
• decision-making in alignment with the CPA Code
• relevant resources within and outside of the CPA profession.

Workshop 1e: *full* Virtual - Personal and Corporate Reputation in the Era of “Shares” and “Likes” with Morgan Hamel, MA 

MORGAN HAMEL, MA, is the President of MH Partners Inc., a boutique consulting firm adept at helping leaders appreciate and communicate moral nuance to build stakeholder trust and long-term value. With experience in corporate ethics (11 years in the ethics office of a large organization), academia (Master’s Degree in Applied Ethics from Utrecht University in the Netherlands) and ethical entrepreneurship (founded an ESG-centric ethical fashion marketing company that generated $1M in responsible sales in its first corporate year), Morgan offers clients a business-focused, ethics-rooted perspective on reputation management that doesn’t exist elsewhere.

Overview:

In 2012, “shares” and “likes” began to be widely used on social media – a change which created a new era of reputation risk for both individuals and organizations. This seminar will use behavioural ethics research and real-life case studies to show participants that we don’t always behave as ethically as we think we will and offers proven strategies for personal and corporate reputation protection.

Course Description:

All it takes is one look at our morning news feed to see how personal and corporate reputations can be lost in an instant. While it’s easy to judge people and organizations who experience this fate, the reality is that in this new era of iPhones and social media, well-meaning people (who see themselves as ethical) can fall quickly in ways that leave personal and professional scars for years to come. In this edge-cutting course, participants will learn how key concepts from behavioural ethics can help us strengthen and protect both our personal reputations and those of our organizations.

Applicable for those who want to learn how key concepts from behavioural ethics can help strengthen and protect both their personal reputations and those of their organizations.

Learning Objectives:

• understand the new era of (business) ethics and appreciate how having a more nuanced understanding of ethics can help us behave more ethically and strengthen our reputation in work and in life
• understand what behavioural ethics means for the practical implication of business ethics and reputation management, including an understanding of bounded ethicality, ethical fading and motivated blindness
• learn The Self-Interest Snap - a strategy to help you get closer to being as ethical as you think you are (and make it more likely

Content:

• business ethics
• behavioural ethics
• reputation management
• social media
• cancel culture.

Workshop 1f: *full* Virtual - Business Ethics: From Enron to Lehman Brothers with Ken Lewchuk 

KEN LEWCHUK, CPA, is a Chartered Professional Accountant (British Columbia) and a Certified Public Accountant (Texas). He graduated with a MBA from the Edinburgh Business School and with an MA in Applied and Professional Ethics from the University of Leeds (Distinction). His career has spanned technical accounting, risk management, internal audit, and corporate compliance, working in public accounting (PwC) and for corporations in United States and Canada. He has taught technical accounting and finance classes to corporate employees in several countries, been a conference speaker, and a guest lecturer at Texas A&M University on the topic of business ethics.

Overview

The course will explore personal and cultural factors which influence ethical behavior through the lens of two iconic business ethics case studies: the 2001 collapse of Enron Corporation and the 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. In comparing the two cases, research from moral psychology and the role accountants played will be discussed. We will also have the opportunity to reflect upon what lessons may be learned from these cases and how they might be applied in our current business environment.

Course Description

The collapse of Enron Corporation and Lehman Brothers are iconic case studies which are still mentioned in the field of business ethics. However, discussions of these case studies are often superficial with respect to the complex ethical, financial, and accounting issues involved. They also often focus on legal and regulatory issues involved rather than those of moral psychology and culture. This course will provide a more advanced analysis of these cases from the perspective of moral psychology and culture, with the objective of understanding how lessons learned may be applied to our current business environment. This will benefit anyone seeking an understanding of ethical behavior within large corporations or firms, or who have an interest in the case studies presented.

Applicable for general interest but specifically applicable finance and accounting professionals who work in large organizations.

Learning Objectives

• explain what contributed to the rise and fall of Enron Corporation and Lehman Brothers, including the consequences on society and the role accountants played
• explain the similarities and differences between the rise and fall of Enron Corporation and Lehman Brothers
• explain the psychological process for individual moral decision making
• explain some of the cultural factors which influence individual moral decisions
• consider how these psychological and cultural factors may influence their own ethical behaviour.

Content

The Collapse of Enron

• deregulation of the natural gas industry
• the role of McKinsey & Company and creation of the “Gas Bank”
• expansion into other commodities
• accounting use of commodity derivatives and “special purpose entities”
• financial bankruptcy

The collapse of Lehman Brothers

• role of US Government and the Federal Reserve
• creation of credit derivatives
• accounting use of “Repo 105” and “special purpose entities”
• financial bankruptcy

Personal moral failure

• moral decision-making process
• exercise: Identification of moral situation from “Margin Call”

Corporate culture/moral psychology

• Milgram experiment
• Asch lines
• Kohlberg Theory of Moral Development
• routinized behavior and pressure to perform
• time pressure – Princeton Theological Seminary
• role of fear
• compliance programs

Synergistic corruption

• what is synergistic corruption and the role it played at Enron/Lehman

Conclusion

• exercise: what should we/I do?

Workshop 1g Virtual: Professional Ethics for Career & Life Success - Good for Business and the Right Thing to Do with Joel Shapiro

JOEL SHAPIRO, Ph.D., has trained 1,000s of leaders on three continents and held leadership roles in operating businesses and start-ups. Joel’s consulting work focuses on building talent, teamwork, organizational learning, and culture-shift. Prior to founding Advanture Consulting in 2001, Joel helped save his third-generation family business in an extreme turnaround situation, earned a Ph.D. with Distinction in Philosophy, and was a member of the Canadian National Freestyle Ski Team. Joel is always seeking the perfect blend of humanity and business performance.

Overview

The reasons to work ethically are obvious: your professional designation depends on it; it is crucial to your reputation and long-term career success; cleaning up from ethical lapses is incredibly harsh and expensive; and it is good to be good, by definition. Ethical behaviour also makes your organization, industry, and country better places to work and live.

Course Description

This hands-on, participatory workshop will guide you through several classic ethical frameworks and supply you with practical tools and techniques you can use to maintain high standards of ethics in your work and on your team. We will provide you with a framework you can use to ensure you are working ethically even when you are charting new territory, pushing the boundaries, and where the law is unclear or not yet developed.

Applicable for all professionals at all levels who are working in our complex and fast paced world.

Content

• use our framework for auditing decisions and actions for ethicality
• improve their rigor in resolving ethical challenges
• better understand the ethical principles supporting the CPA Code and the law
• understand systems thinking as it applies to ethical challenges
• have a better understanding of the relationship between ethics and law
• use a major leadership practice to anchor ethical attitudes and behaviour on their teams.

Computer Lab Topics:

In-Person and Virtual attendees can attend these labs.

Computer Lab 1d: Excel Pivot Tables

Learn how to take simple data sets from various sources and summarize them into reports and charts. You will learn the best way to create pivot tables so that once reports are created, they will automatically refresh when new data is entered so that weekly or monthly reporting will take only a few moments. You’ll also learn how to make multiple reports connected to a single data set as well as add visual filters allowing the end-user to easily dive deeper into data.

Computer Lab 2d: PowerPoint

If you’ve found that making a PowerPoint presentation seems like it takes hours, you’ll need to come to this workshop. Learn how to quickly make a PowerPoint presentation. Learn how to organize thoughts in a way that will get the information across to the audience in an engaging way and how to display the information with a balance of creativity without too much “dazzle”. We will discuss ways to present that will capture the various learning styles of your group. You’ll learn how to use the new PowerPoint Designer feature to automatically reformat slides to context sensitive suggestions. Take control of slide transitions and animations to “pre-record” your show. Learn how to create the best notes for the speaker and for the audience. You’ll learn the most important keyboard shortcut for making the most out of your presentation and finally, presentation tips to avoid “Death by PowerPoint”.

Computer Lab 3d: Excel Functions

Excel has over 300 functions but how to find them and use them? Learn the key strategies to find the functions you need and then how to use them. You’ll learn about creating dynamic named ranges so that you can build a function on another sheet that will access exactly the data you want, without having to even go to the sheet and look at the data. With dynamic named ranges the formulas will keep their integrity as the data set changes in size. Finally, you’ll learn the secret of how to create seemingly long and complex nested functions in one cell.

Computer Lab 4c: Word

This will be the best hour you have ever spent working within Word. Everyone will learn a host of tips on how to move, select, format, organize and transform bodies of text into a beautiful and functional report. You’ll receive and practice at least 30 keyboard shortcuts that you can use everyday. You’ll use selecting options that you’ll wish you learned ten years ago. You’ll learn about the navigation pane and some secret hidden superpowers that it has. If you are Word user, I guarantee this course will lead to a happier life.

Workshop 1c: Raising the Bar – Building Back Teams - Sue Wazny

Sue is a highly sought-after speaker who captivates her audience with her energetic, humorous, and engaging presentation style. She effectively combines theory with real-life examples from her daily work, making her presentations poignantly relevant. For the past 30 years, she has been an adult educator for government agencies, educational institutions, social organizations, and the private sector. Sue recently retired as a faculty member at the Justice Institute of BC in the Centre for Conflict Resolution after 30 years. In addition to her workshops and conferences, Sue maintains a clinical practice that includes workplace mediation, team assessments, team facilitations, Bullying & Harassment investigations, performance coaching, and critical incident stress management.

Sue is highly qualified, with a Master's of Science degree in Psychology and certificates in Conflict Resolution and Mediation from the Justice Institute. She is also a certified Myers Briggs Type Indicator practitioner.

Overview:

In 2020, we were plunged into a world pandemic, told to isolate and learn how to work remotely. For some employees, this was perhaps a dream come true – getting to work virtually in pajamas with a furry creature on the desk. For the majority of employees, the sense of isolation and disengagement took its toll. After an unsettling two years, employees were asked to return to in person work. Teams started coming back to the workplace, often to staggered work teams, unsure about the new norms, with no guidance on how to re-engage. The outcome for some teams has been an uptick in disrespectful behaviours, gaps in communication and a general lack of connection.

This engaging and dynamic session examines how teams need help to reintegrate, and what is involved. Leaders play a key role in setting the example, providing the tools and clear guidance on what the “new norm” looks like. Participants will leave the session with practical tools they can use right away, without adding to their busy roles, to ensure a genuinely inclusive and respectful workplace for all.

Concurrent Workshop 1c: Implementation of the Clear, Caring and Courageous Leadership Framework with Leaders at Fraser Health Authority - Dr. Adrienne Castellon 

Dr. Adrienne Castellon is a Client Partner with People Development at Fraser Health working in Manager, Director and Physician leadership development. She has authored numerous publications on leadership and education and been in several leadership positions throughout her career. Adrienne serves on several boards related to social justice and is an active member of the Executive Leadership Team for the International Leadership Association’s Women in Leadership and Healthcare member communities. She enjoys learning, exploring new places and providing hospitality in her home. More about Adrienne on LinkedIn.  

This engaging session will give an overview of the new Clear Caring Courageous leadership framework launched September 28, 2022 at the largest health authority in British Columbia, Fraser Health. In year one of this large-scale initiative the goal is to create awareness and understanding of the framework through programs, site-based support and educational resource promotion across FHA.

Participants will be invited to take part in one of many learning activities facilitated by the People Development department meant to promote understanding and implementation of the framework by managers, directors and physicians. Participants will be lead through a guided, self-reflective activity that will bring greater awareness to their role and leadership across the organization. Come and increase your understanding of your own clear, caring and courageous leadership practices from the perspectives of leading self, leading others and leading in your organization. Learn about effective strategies to enhance leader adoption of desired leadership behaviours applicable to any organization.

Concurrent Workshop 2a: Leverage Data Insights and Analytics to Optimize your Operations - Presented by Marilia Araujo, Partner, Data Analytics and AI

More info coming! 

Concurrent Workshop 2c: Value-Based Healthcare: Achieving Value for Patients and the System - Meghan MacLeod, Cherie Au, Dr. Shannon Jackson

At Providence Health Care, the implementation of Value-Based Health Care (VBHC) is enabling teams to achieve what matters to patients. By linking the measurement of patient outcomes to the measurement of costs over the cycle of care, value can be generated for patients and the healthcare system. This session will offer an introduction to VBHC with a focus on costing methodology and discussion of opportunities to improve care delivery in BC.

 

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