"Cheating on ethics exam" sounds bad but it amounts to not taking some boring corporate CYA compliance training seriously, it's not actually unethical in my opinion. If anything it speaks to how bad corporate training is generally, not the ethics of the people "cheating".

Probably similar to you, I couldn't read the FT article because it's behind a paywall; however, I'm familiar with the general story. It's not some corporate training. They, plus many other accounting firms, cheated on professional licensing exams. Egregious because the accounting firms are doing the opposite of their sole purpose - add trust to the financial system.

if only this were limited to ethics and compliance.

expertise is a virtue in modern society. signaling it well is often easier and more successful than developing and maintaining it.

damn lucrative, too.

this is why we can’t have nice things.

It starts with interviews which select you based on how well you speak instead of what you speak.

They interview you on whether you were interviewed before.

They cheated on the ethics exam, THEN they lied about their cheating.