TCCCFE Ethics Training Current Issues in Business Ethics and Fraudster Ethics: Behavioral Cues - Virtual Training
February 12th, 2025, 8:30am CST to 11:30am CST - 3 ETHICS CPE
8:30 am – 9:45am - Boz Bostrom, CPA
Speaker Topic: Boz Bostrom will provide participants with an update on business ethics issues. There will be an emphasis on discussing fraud cases that have been in the news over the past year and focusing on what accountants and fraud examiners may learn from these cases.
Learning objectives:
- What terms like ethics and integrity can mean in different organizations and how to find clues
- How biases and assumptions can impact investigations in the workplace
- What we can do to identify stated and unstated expectations and biases
- How to maintain independence and focus on fact-finding
Boz Bostrom is a professor of accounting and finance at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University. Boz teaches a variety of accounting and finance courses and speaks nationally on the topics of ethics and leadership. Boz is the author of three books and serves as the Chair of the board of directors of the Minnesota Society of CPAs. Prior to becoming a professor, Boz was a senior manager in Deloitte’s international tax practice.
10:00 am – 11:30 am Ian Callaway, MA, MEd, PhD(c), RHU, BCFE, TRiP, CEA, CFI, MFA-P, CFE, EBP, DCDP
Speaker Topic: Fraudster Ethics: Predatory Behavioral Cues
Fraud is a human transaction intended to secure an unfair and unlawful gain predicated by deliberate acts of deception. Regardless of the many types of fraud that may be perpetuated, to establish fraud, two core, but sequential, elements must be established: the “Act” [Actus Reus]; and, the “Guilty Mind” [Mens Rea]. From an ethical perspective, the distinction between “right” or “wrong” is often codified into law—the “Act”. Based in ethics, breaching the law then becomes the “Act”. While fraud involves a sequential investigative pursuit to establish a breach of the “Act”, and then determining the “Guilty Mind”, my session will reverse the sequence to alert attendees to various subliminal and communication cues that are often correlated with fraudulent behaviors. While analytics has developed such techniques as artificial intelligence algorithms to predict crime and geographic profiling to hone in on the locations of financial predators, understanding simple personality markers can serve as likely predictively correlated alerts concerning a Predator’s undeclared motivations to deceive. As for the environment in which such Predators lurk, attention will be given both to a variety of institutional environments as well as to those one-on-one interactions, whether they be direct or indirect. To illustrate such a range of interactional environments, I will present my content analysis of a randomly selected television fraud series of 100 episodes. After having set the stage in identifying a potential Fraudster’s behavioral cues and to locational encounters, attention will then focus on the psychological profile of Fraudsters. After a review of the diagnostic positions between psychiatrists’ personality disorders nomenclature and what other professionals consider as “Psychopaths” or “Sociopaths”, with their wide range of professional backgrounds attendees will be introduced to other more suitably practical descriptors of the “Guilty Mind”. While being alert to potential behavioral cues as well as an understanding of the psychological drivers of Fraudsters is important, equally important is an awareness of overt and covert tactical defenses that fraudulent Predators apply in the face of one having challenged their ”Guilty Mind”. I will also integrate some of the challenges that alert observers, often called “Whistle-blowers”, face in their unveiling of fraudulent deceit. My presentation style will rely heavily on visuals as background to the oral descriptors—I do not read the visuals as these are visual anchors to the oral presentation.
Learning Objectives:
- Identify how “ethics” is a tipping point in understanding fraud
- Describe more commonly dominant key brain lobes in fraudsters
- Explain the differences between Sociopaths and Psychopaths
- Isolate tactical practices fraudsters use to build self-serving defenses
- Provide a conceptual framework for alerting behaviors often correlated with fraud
Ian Callaway is a Strategic Analyst and Principal of the Income Protectors having consulted with clients across North America for 35+ years. While his core subject competency areas involve personal risk insurances and common interest housing complexes, underpinning both for the past 30 years has been the insidious role of fraud. On Insurance matters, Ian has published extensively and presented at a wide variety of Professional Continuing Education Sessions ranging from Accountants, Attorneys, Insurance Agents, and Financial Planners across Canada from Vancouver to Toronto as well as the USA from San Jose to Baltimore and from Minneapolis to Dallas. Ian has also published a number of fraud related articles ranging from the Behavioral Profile of Fraudsters to Money Laundering. While his article “Big Hat, No Cattle” having been published in a major USA publication was written for “fun”, it has implications in the study of fraud. Additionally, he has spoken to Fraud Study Groups with attendees from California, Florida, Nevada, and Ohio as well as recently at the San Francisco ACFE Chapter #153’s AGM and Canada’s Association of Forensics Investigators’ 25th National Convention. In addition to having taken doctoral level courses at the University of Toronto and the East-West Institute in Hawaii in Curriculum Design, Non-Verbal Communications, Reverse Culture Shock, Social Learning Theory as well as the Psychology of Bullying, he has taken a wide variety of professional certification programs related to his Practice as well as the Justice Institute of British Columbia. Regardless of the alphabet behind his name, he is a life-long learner emphasizing that “What I did yesterday, is already out of date”.
