TASKS: the focus of this final Assessment Task is on improving your investigation and analysis and skills to go deeper than/beyond just describing what happened, when, and who did it in the tax leak scandal at PwC Australia.

Focus on the causes and consequences (impacts) of the failures in strategic leadership.

• Identify what strategic leadership measures in PwC Australia, including safeguards and mandated internal controls to maintain compliance with contractual obligations and standards should have been taken to prevent the breach of trust and conflict of interest between advising the Australian Tax Office on new laws and regulations to reduce multinational corporations avoiding tax and simultaneously advising these same multinational corporations on ways to anticipate and get around these proposed new ATO laws and regulations.

• Investigate and summarise the ethical failures and reputational damage admitted by Acting CEO Christin Stubbins and new CEO Keven Burrowes.

• Identify any other crucial failures of strategic leadership in PwC to apply and maintain ethical principles , and safeguard against the ethical threats to independence of action of that have been made public by the tax leak scandal, including:

• Corruption?
• Breaches of confidentiality failure to maintain confidentiality with government departments and agencies?
• Failure to uphold professional standards?
• Failure to comply with government rules and requirements for consultants?
• Integrity failures?
• Governance failures?
• Transparency failures?
• Social Responsibility failures?

• Evaluate the success or otherwise of the previous CEO (who resigned) and Acting CEO Christin Stubbins initial strategy to ringfence (put a protective barrier around) and confine the scope of police, government and journalists enquiries into who was involved in the tax leak scandal. Is this ringfence strategy going to succeed in minimising the extent of the scandal - and enable PwC to continue bidding for multi-million $ contracts with Australian Government departments including the Reserve Bank and the Australian Federal Police (who are now investigating PwC)?.

• Assess the latest strategy by PwCs global leadership and newly appointed CEO Kevin Burrowes to rescue the reputation and ongoing financial viability of its PwC Australian division: sell off the government consultancy arm worth $250+ million annually before the scandal broke for $1 to Allegra, then create a new entity called Bell and transfer 1000+ PwC staff involved in government consultancy projects to it.
• Do you agree with Senator Barbara Pockock that this is just a phoenix strategy i.e. close down a business after it gets a bad name (or big debts), then reopen under a new name and new ABN?
• Is it likely to be a successful leadership strategy that wins back the confidence of the Australian Government and/or the NSW Government, in your judgment?