What a professional code is for, and the five principles

The bargain

A self-regulating profession is one that society allows to set its own standards of entry and conduct, and to police them. Doctors, lawyers and Chartered Professional Accountants all hold that licence. It is a bargain: the public gets a body of practitioners whose work it can rely on without checking it, and in return the profession promises to keep its members to a standard higher than the law requires and to discipline those who fall short. A code of professional conduct is the written form of that promise. It exists chiefly to sustain public trust — not to market the profession, not to protect members from clients, and not because a statute demands one. If the trust goes, so does the licence to self-regulate.

Who is bound? In Ontario, the CPA Ontario Code of Professional Conduct binds members and firms. Registered students are bound by a separate CPA Ontario Student Code, which rests on the same principles. (Both read at time of writing, 2026. The course uses "students", the category CPA Ontario uses; it does not use "candidates".) A co-op student who has not yet registered is bound by neither — but is bound by the firm's policies, by the law, and by every expectation the firm's members carry for those they supervise.

The five fundamental principles

The CPA Code rests on five fundamental principles, in this order, each paired here with a student-life example so the label attaches to something you have seen:

1. Professional behaviour — conduct that maintains the profession's good reputation and serves the public interest. A student who tweets a mocking summary of a client's meeting has damaged something that belongs to the whole profession.
2. Integrity and due care — honesty and straightforwardness, and the care a competent professional would take. Signing off a reconciliation you did not check fails due care even if every number is right.
3. Objectivity — judgement not compromised by bias, conflict of interest, or the influence of others. Recommending the vendor who bought lunch fails it; so does letting a partner's preference decide a question the evidence should.
4. Professional competence — taking on only the work you can do to the required standard, and keeping your knowledge current. Accepting a crypto-asset file with no experience and no plan to acquire it.
5. Confidentiality — information held because of an engagement is used for nothing else and told to no one outside it. The roommate case of the last lesson.

The Code's rules — numbered, and named in the next lesson — are the detailed working-out of these five. The MCQ asks for the five by name; the writing assessments ask you to name the one at stake in a scenario.

Two things that are not principles

Independence is the one students most often add to the list. It is a rule (rule 204), and it applies to assurance engagements — audits and reviews — where the practitioner must be, and be seen to be, free of the client. It is related to objectivity but narrower: objectivity is a principle for all work; independence is a specific standard for assurance work. Loyalty to the client is never a principle. A professional owes the client competent, honest service; the moment loyalty would require concealing something from a bank or a regulator, the public interest — the first principle — wins.

Match five scenarios

• A junior forwards a client's payroll file to a friend at another firm "for a template". (Confidentiality.)
• A student agrees to prepare a trust return for a relative, having never seen one. (Professional competence.)
• A staff member scores the vendor evaluation after that vendor hosted her at a conference. (Objectivity.)
• A junior lets a schedule go out without re-adding the totals because "the client's spreadsheet always foots". (Integrity and due care.)
• A student posts a photo from inside a client's warehouse with a joke about their inventory count. (Professional behaviour.)