It’s an honour to be selected as a BFSO Young Ambassador and to be a signatory of the Oath. As a young financial services professional with an ambition to do what is right, I’m delighted to have this opportunity to learn from industry experts as to how my peers and I can lead by example and practice the law in such a way that we can embody the important values that are core to our profession (honesty, trust and integrity).
Beyond our duty to serve the best interests of our clients, lawyers should never lose sight of our ultimate duty to the community and, as interpreters of the law, the key role we play in facilitating the administration of justice within our communities. Without an acute awareness of the distinction between doing what is right and what is legal, and a clear method of navigating the moral grey area in which it is our duty to apply purposely broad laws in modern contexts, ethical decision-making (the bridge between doing what is legal and what is right) can become a lost practice.
Thanks to The BFSO Young Ambassadors Program, I’m looking forward to developing a strong and fit for purpose set of ethical skills which through reflective practice will help me to identify and address ethical dilemmas I may not otherwise see in my workplace, and in our financial services industry more broadly. I’m also eager to be joining forces with a network of likeminded young professionals in the industry, and to use my experience of this program as a way to spark important and currently undervalued conversations about the important role ethical decision-making should have in the daily operations of legal professionals.