CIMA T4 | Ethics

Ethics – Don’t let it be an afterthought for you!

Ethics is 10 marks in the exam, and significant enough that it is a whole section in your report, yet it is often the forgotten element of T4, which people treat as an after-thought – something to do at the end if they’ve got time. In our post-exam research of over 200 CIMA T4 students, over 20% did not complete this section, meaning an almost certain failure. The examiner has noticed this problem too. In the September 2011 Post Exam Guide it was noted that many students did complete two ethics issues, and two is the minimum you need. In my experience, the people that get good marks in this section tend to cover three issues.

There are two parts to ethics, the first of these is the analysis of ethical issues. Marks are awarded for recognizing each of the ethical issues and explaining why that is ethically right or wrong.

In my experience, people are good at identifying ethical issues, but poor at saying why they are ethical issues. Ethics is about doing the right thing. Bribery is wrong because the person taking the bribe doing what is right for them personally rather than the organization they’re working for. Take care to ensure you focus on why something is wrong thing to do given our moral values and cultural norms.

The second element to ethics is to make solid ethical recommendations. Remember there are just as many marks for the ethical recommendations as there are for analyzing the issue, so you should be writing just as much on these as you are on your analysis. This is a common mistake in scripts I mark where the recommendation ends up being a single line or two at the end.

One key to success in ethics is to ensure you have a standard structure for every ethics issue. I recommend using the following sub-headings every time to make sure you’ve never missed this out: What are the facts, Why is it an ethics issue?, Business consequences, Recommendation 1 (short term), Recommendation 2 (Long term). To see some excellent examples see our ethics sections in our mock exams or if you really want to master ethics in your exam work through our comprehensive guide and examples in our ethics e-book. All of these materials are also available as part of our full T4 course.