“I feel like particularly with the SMSF sector there are three major ethical challenges - conflict of interest, dealing with capacity, and trying to help clients without shifting the bar,” Danoun said.

Shelley Banton, head of education for ASF Audits, said there are new requirements for members of professional accounting bodies to have mandatory ethics training of six hours every three years as part of their CPD conditions.

“And when we look at some of the ethical problems we've seen in the accounting profession, such as the PwC tax advice scandal and the Deloitte exam cheating scandal, you’ll probably wonder why more aren’t required,” Banton said.

“Acting ethically is a critical part of the profession if we want to maintain public trust, but sometimes there's a situation where we talk about the law versus ethics and we see that something legal may not always be ethical whether we point to accounting standards or other potential things we might come across.”

Danoun said while advances in medicine have meant life expectancy has increased, often cognitive ability may decline and ethically that is something financial professionals must always consider.

“You just need to look at statistics about self-managed super funds and the age of members to know there is something there and think about how you would be dealing with this,” he said.

“I feel like those issues will come to the surface and it’s important to think about how you can deal with conflict of interest in a problem around this. You want to do the right thing by your clients and feel right about what you're doing.”

He said as financial professionals, a major component is helping clients with their businesses, cash flows, wealth and retirement plans, and there are aspects of decision making that may not be inherently bad or wrong but can test the moral compass.

“We need to be quite wary that it can be a slippery slope and moral humility and ethical points are so critical and that model hypocrisy is the enemy of moral humility,” Danoun said.

“It's an important element to mitigate biases for us to recognise that just because you have done something a million times it’s OK to keep doing it. That can be counterproductive. Instead, you should be asking yourself if maybe you should do something different. It’s important to remain vigilant because if we don’t, we could go down the wrong track.”

For example, he said financial professionals are often faced with clients who want access to their superannuation for a variety of reasons, but it is important to consider whether allowing that to happen could defeat the public interest and integrity of the superannuation system.

“You have to take a step back and ask yourself ‘What if everyone wants to do this?’,” Danoun said.

“Sometimes the consequences of a decision may not be visible at the outset, or the unintended consequences, but as professionals we can try to recognise and mitigate our biases and remain alert.”