Minister of Finance, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, gives out some tips to become reliable financial professionals. These financial professions include accountants, financial appraisal services, and actuaries.
In her opinion, as a professional, an accountant needs to have independency.
“As a professional, we of course have to keep our independency as a professional. Independency can affect output quality from the work of a financial professional,” she said.
A financial professional has to be fully aware that their work will affect the economic decision making by service users and other parties.
“A user who comes to us certainly has their own interest and our working outcome will be used by many parties with their own respective interests,” explained Sri Mulyani.
“So, we need to keep our professional skepticism in providing services, don’t let ourselves to be caught up inside the scenario of others’ interests,” she continued.
An accountant must also have other ethic which is not less important than independency, it is integrity. Every accountant has a good code of ethics and professional standards, but it’s meaningless if it’s not used in providing services.
Integrity will determine how much an accountant is worth to trust by others. Integrity will generate reputation and achievement as well as build a brand to be more recognized by stakeholders.
“In today’s forum, I want to invite everyone in this room, the ones who have been professionals or those who will become one, to join and take roles in maintaining and enhancing independency and integrity in doing every single job,” she stated.