By Jacqueline Stone. Jacqueline is a lawyer, venture capitalist and Faculty member with Cranlana Centre for Ethical Leadership, which works with leaders and organisations across Australia to grow their ethical capability.

The trouble with blind spots is that you don’t know you have them.

At Cranlana Centre for Ethical Leadership, when we talk about ethical failures, we’re not just talking about the grand, cinematic kind or the tragic dilemmas where someone must make an impossible choice. More often, the truly devastating failures are quieter. They happen when good people, trying to do their best, look back and ask: How did I let that happen?

It’s a question that has kept most professionals, including me, awake at night. Often, it can be traced back to a failure of objectivity.

What Objectivity Really Means

Objectivity isn’t detachment or indifference, it’s the discipline of seeing clearly. For accountants, it’s foundational. It is the presentation of facts and evidence without bias or undue influence. The Code defines it as avoiding the impact of bias, conflict of interest, or reliance on others (or technology) in your professional judgement. But the absence of bias is not a natural state. It’s a skill that requires continual practice. Bias creeps in like dust, gradually, invisibly and often through the best of intentions. Like dust, it’s only when it has settled that we can understand the situation at hand. Most of us can spot the obvious threats to objectivity - a financial interest, a family connection, a direct conflict. Systems exist to identify and manage those. It’s invisible threats, that arise from relationships, comfort, confidence, loyalty, self-interest and habit that can be more dangerous.

Slow Erosion

Objectivity tends not to collapse suddenly. It erodes. Over time, we develop patterns of trust and reliance, on colleagues, clients, even on our own past judgement. Familiarity feels like safety and before long, we stop scanning for danger. The professional scepticism that once came naturally starts to feel a little rude. After all, you’ve known these people for years. They’ve always done the right thing before.

This is how blind spots form.

The journalist Diana Henriques, who covered the Madoff scandal, said it best: “The best protection against deceit isn’t suspicion, it’s humility.” Not the humility of self-effacement, but the humility of recognising that anyone, even you, can be misled or mistaken.

Guarding Against the Invisible

So how do you protect yourself from what you can’t see?

Start by accepting that no one is immune. Then build habits that make objectivity a living practice rather than a static virtue.

• Scan for danger – again and again! Treat your ethical radar like your inbox - it needs to be checked regularly. Ask yourself, ‘What might I be missing?’ This is particularly important in recurring engagements or when working with others over long periods of time.
• Be sceptical, not cynical. Professional scepticism isn’t about distrust, it’s about verification. Prioritise evidence, avoid assumptions, and be wary of those who seem unduly affronted by reasonable inquiry.
• Don't waive the rules. In almost every ethical failure, a pattern appears. Rules were bent or ignored for a “special case.” It’s often the first sign that objectivity has begun to slip.
• Test your thinking. Seek out a trusted colleague who will tell you what you may not want to hear. The Devil’s advocate can ironically be your friend when challenging your objectivity.
• Leave your ego at the door. It’s human nature to rely heavily on your personal judgement of someone – never forget, it’s easier than you think to be fooled.
• Communicate openly and authentically. Disclose and discuss potential or perceived conflicts of interest with those you are working for. Talk about what you’ll do to safeguard the risks, the role you both play to protect the integrity of the engagement through maintaining objectivity. Document, obtain consent and regularly check in.

Staying Accountable

When objectivity fails, recovery depends on accountability, facing facts, taking responsibility and repairing trust. The work of redemption requires humility, is slow, but possible. Facts and evidence are the accountant’s stock-in-trade, but they’re also ethical anchors. Others rely on your ability to see clearly. The cost of losing that clarity isn’t just reputational, it’s relational. When objectivity goes missing, trust is not far behind.

When it comes to protecting your objectivity, prevention really is better than cure. Benjamin Franklin put it perfectly when he said, “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.” Thinking about it that way encourages you to approach decisions a little differently.

That’s exactly why our Code of Ethics, as a conceptual framework for navigating ethical challenges, is so important. If there aren’t adequate safeguards in place to reduce threats to the fundamental principles—objectivity being a key one—members are required to step away from the client or engagement. And it doesn’t stop there. The Code also asks us to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes by testing those safeguards: would others see them as reasonable? Are they still doing what they’re meant to do? Regularly asking these questions helps ensure our safeguards remain effective and our objectivity stays intact.

If there is an ethical failure, remember that Members have a professional duty to manage it and if it’s material, an obligation to disclose to their professional body when there may have been a breach of the Code or Professional Standards. Taking responsibility goes a long way in positively addressing what has happened.

The Quiet Discipline

Objectivity doesn’t announce itself with fanfare and it won’t win you awards. It’s a quiet discipline that depends on humility, vigilance and the courage to doubt your own certainty. It can’t be delegated to systems or left to ethics checklists. Like all of the ethical foundations, it’s something you live, every day, through every decision. And like any discipline worth having, the moment you think you’ve mastered it is probably the moment you’ve stopped practising it.