Interview Stephanie Hottenhuis

Well, thank you for your question. I would say yes or no. In our assurance environment, for already 106 years, of course providing trust especially in the financial markets is our core business. However, in our advisory business it is equally important because the advice that we give is obviously given in a very confidential and trusting setting with our clients. Also our advisory clients actually have to lean on, count on, and trust our pieces of advice that we give. However, I agree with you that in the assurance environment our responsibility is also regulated because we add assurance and the need for assurance is very broad in society but very specific towards the financial markets. We add assurance to the financial markets and financial statements. Yeah, so trust is crucial.

I would say that we all experience and can observe that societal trust is eroding. People, big cohorts of people, mistrust or challenge or quiz a lot of things. Does corona exist? Are results of our elections correct? Are government decisions taken on the right premise? And who are these people and are they a certain group that has other intentions? The whole of the, you know, complex thinking is something that we cannot deny is happening out there. So I would say societally, definitely we are seeing an erosion of trust and we should definitely ask ourselves the question: is this effective life? Do we just have to accept it and shrug and carry on? I think it is a very dangerous thought because we saw what happened with the storm in the Capitol building in the US, at the end of people who actually mistrusted the results of the elections. But it isn't a very easy fix. I don't think that there is one panacea. We can discuss the root causes of why this occurred and we can see that obviously we have to understand what is driving people who believe all kinds of theories, how we can continue to communicate with people who believe in theories, what is the difference between fact and fiction. You know that we saw also terms like 'alternative facts' coming to existence and of course the role of social media and the increasing bubble-making effect that it has on our lives. So I think this is a very important societal issue that all of us have a role to play in from business.

Well, I say that for me personally, I would say it has two roles. One is very simple and it is that as a person who is a participant in society, I would like to take a stance that I am open-minded, that I am asking about the why, what is the reason behind the motive behind actions by other people. I am not judgmental, I shouldn't be jumping to conclusions. There is a lot of homework that each and every one of us can do in order to increase this societal trust, being curious about how other bubbles are acting as an individual. And the other role is that I am the CEO of KPMG, an organization that is a big actor in this, and that is a role that I have a very specific task to get our act together, to continue to invest in audit quality, to continue to invest in our culture and a culture of collaboration and trusting each other, and especially in psychological safety. Because I think that when you feel safe, when you feel able to bring your point, bring yourself to work without concerns, without fear, that is the biggest requirement to create a very trusting environment. And that's where I am accountable and responsible for. This is where we have to get our act together.

I don't want to bore our listeners with a lesson on psychological safety, but in fact it is something that you can measure. You can measure through surveys, cultural surveys, in which you can look and shine the light on psychological safety and know where it is coming from. It has to do with how you're encouraged to learn in a safe way, how you're encouraged to speak up in a safe way, and so on. But it's something that you can learn from, something that you can measure, and something that you can see either on individual teams, how you train your leaders to be advocates of psychological safety on the one hand, and on the other what processes you need in place in order to make it happen. And I think that especially here in the Netherlands, we had a lot of discussion and conversation around it. Many of the people seeing and listening will know exactly what I mean, where you see that you need an infrastructure of processes, people who can listen confidentially to issues that are happening, a culture that is encouraging people to actually speak up, a tone at the top that is encouraging that. So it's a combination of doing things and getting your act together in practice around leadership capabilities, the tone at the top, and processes.

Yeah, absolutely. And it is not 'can', it 'must' be done. And it's not a one-time thing, it's not a check, because if you set out on this journey, you will find out that societal interpretation of what is acceptable behavior is evolving as well. So something that three years ago was maybe okay, it won't be okay now, and this will continue to evolve. So if this is your intention, this safe culture, then it does need continuous work. It goes in the same plan-do-check-act cycle as every change.

Welcome.