[Anonymous]

I recently accepted a job at a new accounting firm and was wondering what your take is on the legal and ethical (unwritten) rules for sharing workpapers. There are some workpapers I used at my old firm that were internally generated and I don’t want to use them at my new firm if there are any issues… No, I haven’t copied and pasted excel templates, but, as you all know, after filling out the same workpaper over 100 times for different clients they become embedded in your brain; is it wrong to approach the partners at my new job and say “Hey, I have a new way to do this Risk Assessment Summary form that is much better than what PPC offers”, for example? Thanks for your input!

[Anonymous]

I don't think there would be anything wrong with using formatting you learned in your current job at your new job. You're not really using workpapers from your previous job if you're just formatting new workpapers the same way. IMO that's the same as learning the best way to format a spreadsheet in school, then using it once you get a job.

Obviously you shouldn't save any templates from your old job for use at the new job (which you clearly realize already), but if it's just some formatting from memory I personally don't see anything wrong with it.

So I'd say copying, clearly not ok. Using some formatting/memo setup that you learned from doing it over and over again, I don't see why not.

I'll have to watch this thread cause I'm really curious if anyone will come on here and not think it's ok. No one wants to do something they shouldn't!!

[Author]

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