Tell me about your career so far and what areas you specialise in at BDO.

I started with what was then PKF in 2011 as a graduate. They later merged with BDO, and I have since continuously worked my way up through the different levels to Partner. Along the way, I undertook a couple of secondments, one short-term to Washington DC in 2014 and one longer 18-month to London. My main specialisation is audit and assurance, with a focus on ESG.

What main services do you offer your clients in Adelaide?

Fundamentally, BDO provides audit, tax and advisory services. But it’s more complex than that.

In audit, it’s about assessing control environments, identifying risks, and reporting those to clients, who are always keen to make sure they have the best control environment relevant to their organisation and industry. For example, if they’re a small not-for-profit and they don’t have an internal audit function, we might be able to provide comfort they are in keeping with industry norms and they’re not out of step with competitors.

In conducting our audits, a lot of our work is supporting clients, including highlighting what’s coming down the pipeline with accounting standards and reporting, so that they’re not caught off guard by any major changes. We help step them through this by leveraging our sector experience to provide the information clients are really keen to know. We can answer questions from our clients like, ‘Is our accounting system appropriate for our industry?’.

We’re all about just trying to work with clients, not against them. Often, there’s probably the perception that an auditor comes in and is there to find issues. Actually, whilst maintaining our independence, we’ll work with the client to understand where they are trying to achieve and where permissible, help them achieve this whilst maintaining compliance with the standards. We’re not there to just arbitrarily overload them with rules and regulations.

What do you think is the most pressing regulatory or compliance issue businesses in South Australia face now?

I think the broader pressing concern is just the volume of compliance businesses are facing now.

Besides the mandatory reporting that’s coming down the pipeline, which is really only going to hit the big end of town initially, we’re in a bit of a “change lull”. Businesses have recently gone through single-touch payroll and a few things like that, but from an accounting standards perspective, there hasn’t been a lot of material change.

So the biggest challenge, as I said, is really just trying to keep on top of all the compliance that you have to do to run a business these days.

What are the main compliance pitfalls businesses in South Australia often stumble into?

Probably the biggest pitfall comes back to just knowing what you need to comply with. For any business starting out, not knowing what you don’t know is probably the biggest risk.

There are so many departments and regulations you need to comply with, and if you are starting out in business, you might not be aware of all of those. So that’s where there can be some value in a business adviser who specialises in certain sectors. They can really step you through and go, ‘here’s everything you’re going to need to do’.

Mandatory climate reporting is set to start next year. What’s your advice for businesses that are confused about the new laws?

There’s a couple of things.

It’s easy for smaller businesses to dismiss it and go, ‘it only applies to the big end of town’; there is a risk with adopting this approach.

My advice would be, irrespective of the size of your business, you need to be conducting some level of risk assessment. Assess what is or is not going to affect you, and whether you will get caught in someone’s supply chain who is reporting.

That’s where I think you should be conducting a bit of analysis to go, ‘okay, I’m a small provider. I sell to Woolworths (for example). Is there a risk that Woolworths are going to start asking me for climate reporting information so they can fulfil their reporting obligations?’ Probably not in the short term if you’re only selling them, say, $50,000 of product a year. But if you’re selling them $20 million of stock a year, they may consider you a key supplier and therefore, want some information from you.

That’s my advice, just conduct a bit of a risk assessment and speak to your current adviser about it. They should be able to just step you through the process, but if not, feel free to come and chat with anyone at BDO, and we’ll be able to help.

What other areas of ESG should businesses and directors be aware of and actively addressing?

The challenge comes with understanding a bit more about what ESG and mandatory sustainability reporting means. You must report, but what do you actually need to do, step by step?

There is a series of qualitative and quantitative disclosures that need to go in, so it’s not like anything we’ve seen before. This is a really mixed approach to reporting, a little similar to a current directors and remuneration report.

This ties into my previous point about what businesses should be actively addressing and that stakeholder and supply chain analysis to see if you’re going to get caught up in the requirements of anyone you supply to. Who are your customers and are they going to be asking for information? Because the sort of information they’re going to be asking for isn’t the sort of information that you can just quickly pull together – it takes time.