The importance of trust

Moritz says he thought long and hard about the actions of the Andersen partners when the firm was failing and ultimately went out of business.

"It caused me to think about how do you make sure you have the right transparency in terms of what you, do how you do it and why you do it, and making sure you got transparency throughout your entire organisation," he says.

"The second thing is, you as a leader, have got to do the right things for the benefit of the organisation, not the benefit of yourself.

"And I would argue in some leaderships I think the leaders got in the way of their stewardship responsibilities and were self-serving in that mix."

Moritz says the accountability of auditors in 2017 and the practicalities of the governance of PwC mean that he would probably resign or be forced to leave before anyone ever went to jail.

He says the Andersen example showed the importance of "trust, transparency and cascading messages down to everybody".

"That goes to, not just communicating to the next tier of leadership, but to communicating through to 230,000 people around the world," he says.


To ensure communication and transparency PwC recently had a live stream to all staff of its annual leadership team meeting.

"We opened it up to 230,000 people and said if you're interested listen in and, by the way, if you're not able to listen because of time zones we'll send it out to you by video," he says.

'I felt in a minority'

The second significant influence on his leadership style was living in Japan. He was sent there by PwC in his sixth year at the firm, which he joined in 1985.

"It was when I was in Japan I felt in a minority and that caused me to think differently about diversity," he says.

"I went through a divorce, so it caused me to think differently about gender in the workplace in terms of how do you get home in time to take care of the kids, put them to school or put them to bed or cook them a meal.

"So that caused me to think differently. I would say I was very quiet in my early stages of career that you know I was going through the things I was personally going through as a part of that divorce.

"And it was while I was at a particular conference that I said to myself if I'm not going to speak up on this stuff then who ever will and why should I expect anybody else to speak up on this?"


Divorce made me think

Moritz says his divorce made him think more deeply about work life balance and the need for more focus on diversity and allow staff the flexibility that they need.

"So, there's a few things over my career that have been interesting inflection points that I think that make you the leader today," he says.

Moritz says social media has made it easier for anyone and everyone to criticise a leader's performance. But he says he welcomes criticism.

A recent high-profile example of social media sharing its views about PwC was after the best picture envelope mistake on the night of the 2017 Oscars.

"It was a human error," says Moritz.

"The team that were on site worked all night. We went out with a press release accepting the responsibility literally the very next morning.

"I think we reiterated it again on Wednesday and actually we're very transparent with the two people that you know were responsible behind the scenes for the process.


"But this is all about brand and reputation. In today's world managing trust, managing your brand, takes a lot of time and energy and that could be killed in an instant if something happens and you don't respond accordingly."

How do you respond

Moritz says it takes a lifetime to create a brand like PwC and preserving that depends on how the organisation responds to events.

"So the issues and the lessons learned, I think, Oscars and otherwise, and Oscars was just one very small example, are: How do you respond and when do you choose not to respond?

"Anybody can tweet anything from around the world with any facts, anonymously," he says.

"Then you have to, as a CEO, say Do you want to respond? Do you not want to respond?

"You've got to be really thoughtful around this. Oh by the way, because there is less and less trust in authoritative figures, it's probably better to allow for your people, your customers and the society to comment on this stuff and make sure that you're doing all you possibly can and if you are transparent and they become your best advertising agencies."