KPMG is having a terrible, horrible, no good very bad 2026, at least on the Scandal-O-Meter (patent pending).
I’ll not dwell on the specifics of either the 2 big scandals they’ve been hit with this year. What interests me is whether this is isolated to a few bad apples, a bushel or two of apples, or the entire apple crop. BTW, that analogy comes courtesy of the excellent book, “ABCs of Behavioral Forensics,” written by my colleague Sridhar Ramamoorti. If you interested in the question of why people do bad things, it’s great read.
The Polymarket scandal described in this article sounds like the work of a single bad actor, or perhaps a small group. We’ll see, but I doubt there’s a widespread culture of Polymarket cheating at KPMG.
The Austrailia event is much more troublesome. This one isn’t a straightforward ‘cheat for money’ event, it’s a much more insidious ‘cheat for the sake of the company’ scheme. It looks like very senior KPMG Australia leaders used confidential information regarding one client to win new work at the client’s competitors. They then completely bungled handling whistleblowers, doing just about everything you’re not supposed to do in a whistleblower situation.
A decision by senior leaders, who clearly know better, to breach confidentiality to get new clients shows a contempt for ethical behavior. Add a whistleblower cover-up instigated by senior leaders, and it looks this could be a pervasive cultural problem at KPMG Australia.
The next question is whether this (potential) culture problem extends beyond Australia and is Firm-wide. A lot of KPMG clients are going to be asking that question when their audit contracts come up for renewal. KPMG is already the smallest of the Big 4, the last thing they need is a client loss of confidence.
The ironic part of this scandal is that in their effort to grow the business, their ‘expedient instead of ethical’ decision is going to shrink the business.
Ethical Bankruptcy: Gradually, Then Suddenly 