DMD Season 3 Ep 5 - Carla S. Vijian on how auditing made her brave enough to ask hard questions

Curiosity isn’t a personality trait—it’s a practice that can shape a career and safeguard public trust. That idea runs through our conversation with Carla S. Vijian, whose path from Malaysia to New Zealand, Sydney, London and now New York traces a throughline from hands‑on audit work to ethics standard setting. We dive into how fieldwork hardens your scepticism—the kind that looks past headlines and asks who funds what, where assumptions hide, and how incentives bend outcomes—and why that habit is essential when claims move markets, pensions and policy. Carla opens the black box of ethics standards and shows how practical and global the work really is: listening to regulators, investors and firms, and crafting principle‑based guidance that scales across 130+ jurisdictions without losing the self‑awareness professionals need day to day. We test the ideas against live issues: Norway’s Northern Lights CO2 storage milestone and debt‑for‑policy swaps that promise conservation and reconstruction. Both raise the same hard questions—measurement, transparency, accountability—that ethics can answer when applied with rigour. We also tackle AI without the hype: it’s a powerful tool, but not a moral agent. The IESBA’s technology guidance helps identify risks like bias, data integrity and over‑reliance, reminding us to validate models, document judgement and remain accountable for outcomes in the public interest. Threaded through the technical is the human: marathon training as a blueprint for resilience, discipline and humility. You don’t run 42 kilometres at once; you run one at a time. The same is true for building trust—small consistent choices compound. Carla leaves three anchors for the next generation: make curiosity a daily discipline, choose courage over convenience, and pair purpose with patience. If you care about trustworthy reporting, sustainable finance and responsible AI, this conversation will give you practical ways to strengthen your judgement and your impact. If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a colleague, and leave a review with the bravest professional decision you’ve made recently.