Ethics Index 2024
Ethics Index 2024
The overall Ethics Index Score has slightly decreased from 45 to 43, indicating a need for continued improvement in ethical standards across various sectors.
Key findings of the report include:
- The importance of ethics reaches an all-time high of 85, driven by Baby Boomers and Gen X.
- Cost of Living pressures is the top ethical challenge due to rising prices in housing, healthcare, and essentials.
- Ethical considerations around housing, renewable energy, and economic management are key campaign issues ahead of 2025 Federal Election.
- Ethical Professions: Fire Services, Nurses, and Ambulance Services are top-rated; Real Estate agents, federal and state politicians face scrutiny.
- The ethical obligation for organisations to tackle climate change, even if it results in reduced profits or job losses, has increased significantly over the past year.
- Trade Unions and associations have seen substantial declines
- Health is rated as the most ethical sector but GPs who don’t bulk-bill are seen as somewhat unethical
- Education sector declines driven by negative perceptions of universities, university lecturers and private schools
- Media is the least ethical sector with substantial falls in the ethical perceptions of mainstream broadcast media.
This year, Governance Institute of Australia has produced a supplementary report with the support of the National Artificial Intelligence Centre. It provides more qualitative data, exploring the ethical perceptions around artificial intelligence, its use in society and by organisations.
Download Ethics Index 2024 AI report
Build your organisation’s ethics skills
Governance Institute regularly offers a half-day course on ‘Ethics, culture and governance‘ in face-to-face, virtual and self-paced formats. Check out the course outline here.
About Ethics Index 2024
- Annual survey, now in its eighth year, examining perceptions of ethical issues and conduct in Australian society.
- Survey carried out across a nationally representative sample (n=1,000) in July 2023 and weighted according to age, gender and location.
- Research conducted by Ipsos.
About Governance Institute of Australia
A national membership association, advocating for a community of more than 43,000 governance and risk management professionals from the listed, unlisted and not-for-profit sectors. Our mission is to drive better governance in all organisations, which will in turn create a stronger, better society.