Uncover how a billion-dollar fintech giant’s ethical failures led to its dramatic collapse, revealing critical lessons in governance, auditing, and integrity for all professionals.
The Wirecard scandal is one of the most astonishing corporate frauds in modern history — a “stranger than fiction” tale that culminated in the 2020 collapse of a €24 billion financial technology company. For more than two decades, Wirecard’s fraudulent practices persisted, aided by leadership failures, regulatory blind spots, and an organizational culture that normalized misconduct. This course examines how the company’s rise and fall provides invaluable lessons for CPAs on ethics, professional skepticism, and the consequences of ethical lapses.
Participants will explore Wirecard’s misconduct in detail, including:
Alongside the narrative, the course applies key ethical and analytical frameworks, including:
By engaging with this case, participants will learn to:
This compelling course provides CPAs and finance professionals with both the cautionary story of Wirecard and practical strategies to enhance ethical awareness, resist bias, and lead with accountability.
Founder of Sheriff Consulting
I am the founder of Sheriff Consulting which specializes in the development and delivery of accounting, auditing and foundational skill courses and workshops. Teaching and working with professionals in diverse and dynamic learning environments has been my passion and experience for over 10 years. As a qualified Canadian Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA, CA) and U.S. Certified Public Accountant (CPA), I work with finance and accounting professionals in both the U.S. and Canada to meet their training and development needs. My goal has always been to create an engaging and interactive learning environment. To help my own path of continual improvement in achieving this goal, I have also received training and worked as a professional actor. I am a member of ACTRA (the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists) and a graduate in improvisation from the Second City Training Centre. http://sheriffconsulting.com/
Provincial regulators of CPAs in Canada do not require that independent providers of CPD be approved to offer courses. Instead, individual CPAs are responsible for assessing whether a CPD activity meets their requirements, and may take activities from any source provided those requirements are met.
Every course offered on LearnFormula is delivered by a qualified subject matter expert or learning organization, and advances learning objectives that are relevant to the responsibilities or professional competencies of Canadian CPAs. All activities on LearnFormula are quantifiable in terms of hours, and are also verifiable, in that users receive documented evidence of their attendance via a certificate of completion after finishing a course (and this certificate is stored by LearnFormula indefinitely). Nearly 100,000 Canadian CPAs successfully satisfy their CPD requirements via LearnFormula on an annual basis.
