KPMG is not getting ahead of the story. It is being dragged by it. It has a choice, as do all organisations caught out. Either do the minimum they can get away with or commit to genuine reform.
The lineup: Timing is important now for the Big Four accounting firms
Four examples to illustrate what appears to be KPMG’s minimal M/O.
1.
Since March 2026, KPMG Australia has lost its CEO, its chairman, its head of audit, its general counsel, its COO, its head of HR, a board member, and multiple senior audit partners.
Departures appear to follow the same sequence: the person left after, or just before their involvement became publicly untenable.
Last week, three days before Friday’s parliamentary hearing, general counsel Louise Capon and HR chief Dorothy Hisgrove announced their departures. Both were involved in the firm’s handling of the whistleblower matter, which was to be central to KPMG’s Friday humiliation.
It may be coincidence. It looks like a pattern: The firm didn’t act on principle. Nobody was removed before their conduct became or was about to become known. It was about staying just one step ahead of being outed.
2.
KPMG published its Action Plan in June. It purports to be a document about governance reform. https://kpmg.com/au/en/about/governance-leadership/action-plan.html
It should be a key communication document, a step that helps rebuild trust. and shows how KPMG intends to manage a reputation crisis of this scale. To do that in a mistrustful environment requires hard actions and reportable outcomes. I suspect staff would think it falls short. It commits to reviews but few actions.
It does not contain binding commitments on some of the transparency and accountability issues exposed by the parliamentary committee. No binding to a code of conduct or mandatory punishment for breaches. ‘Guidance’ instead of forbidding confidentiality conflicts.
I doubt a potential whistleblower would trust its commitment to ‘update’ policies; for instance, it could but doesn’t guarantee safety and objective investigations for a whistleblower, independent of management.
The gap between “we will review” and “partners will forfeit bonuses/salary for confirmed misconduct” is the gap between spin for appearances and trustworthy reform.
3.
KPMG has been here before. It has chosen to be reactive, where it could have chosen proactivity. At least, it looks that way.
KPMG in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, along with others of the Big Four have both been dragged through the same experience because of cultures that led to misconduct, and then leadership that resisted reform until forced.
In the UK, KPMG audited Carillion, a construction company, for nineteen years. When Carillion collapsed in 2018, approximately 28,000 pension scheme members faced reduced pensions through a fund with an estimated up to £2.6 billion deficit. The Financial Reporting Council investigated.
It found KPMG staff forged meeting minutes and backdated documents to mislead the regulator’s quality reviewers. Heads rolled, and KPMG was fined £14.4 million for misleading the reviewers and a further £21 million for the underlying audit failures.
In the Netherlands, in 2024, an oversight board (PCAOB) fined KPMG a record US$25 million after more than five hundred professionals were found to have shared answers on mandatory ethics and training exams over a five-year period.
The firm didn’t investigate the cheating until a whistleblower forced the issue. Leadership knew about it for years. The firm also made multiple inaccurate representations to investigators about when it first knew.
There is a pattern across jurisdictions: misconduct known to leadership, no investigation until externally compelled, and misrepresentations to the body asking questions. That is KPMG Australia’s story too.
4.
Where is KPMG global in all this?
KPMG International describes itself as the body responsible for protecting and enhancing the KPMG brand, approving strategy, setting quality standards, global policies, and brand consistency.
There have been three separate cultural failures: a network-wide governance problem, misconduct tolerated, whistleblowers suppressed, and investigators misled.
What did International do? It looks like very little. The firm is not getting ahead of the story. It is being dragged by it.
The author – Peter Wilkinson
Trust breaks down in a predictable order
Trust = Truth + Transparency + Traceability. The misuse of client information was a truth failure. Hiding behind privilege and selective briefings was a transparency failure. And the parliamentary committee is now supplying the traceability the firm never volunteered.
Here’s the pity. Whether it’s just perception or fact, it looks as though KPMG’s uniform lack of ethics and misbehaviour is endemic. So, what about the good people, approximately 10,000 of them, who just want to be the best at what they do? Isn’t it reasonable that a leader leaves an organisation in a better state than when they took on the role?
Good crisis communications can buy KPMG time. Only reputation management, actions people can actually see, will buy back trust.
#crisiscommunications #reputationmanagement #constantlearning
