2026 Australian Accounting Hall of Fame Dinner and Awards Ceremony
2026 Hall of Fame Inductees
A memorable celebration for the Australian Accounting Hall of Fame 2026 Awards Ceremony
The 17th annual Awards Ceremony was held at University House on the evening of 11 March. Around 100 guests from the accounting profession, academia, business and government turned out to honour the 2026 inductees. The Dinner and Awards Ceremony is sponsored by the two major accounting professional bodies, CPA Australia and Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, and is a highlight of the year for the accounting community. Honoured as inductees in 2026 were Professor Emerita Jayne Godfrey, and the Mr Ian McPhee AO PSM.
2026 Colin Ferguson Oration
This year’s Colin Ferguson Oration was delivered by Stephen Taylor, UTS Distinguished Professor of Accounting. Over nearly four decades, he has made an outstanding contribution to the accounting discipline as a leading international researcher, educator and standard setter. As a researcher, Stephen has conducted and (continues to conduct) Australian-centred research, building a comprehensive body of work on the attributes of Australian accounting and assurance. This work has significantly advanced our knowledge and understanding of the efficient functioning of Australian capital markets and accounting and auditing practices in Australia. Amongst many other accolades, Stephen is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences; the 2020 CPA Annual Research Lecturer at the University of Melbourne, and was himself inducted to the Australian Accounting Hall of Fame in 2023.
The Oration was titled “Regulating the Auditors: Is There a Role for Research?”, with the answer unsurprisingly being in the affirmative. On the role of regulation, and whether auditors need to be regulated, the key message was regulation, which affects the whole market, should not be “by anecdote” where a single instance of a problem audit can be catalyst for costly regulation, while ignoring the vast majority of audits functioning effectively. In order for research to inform the regulatory process, the following questions need to be answered: Is there a problem? How can the problem be addressed? Has the problem been “solved”?
A key issue is that regulations cannot be evaluated until after they have been implemented. Research can help by addressing this problem both prospectively and post-implementation with a variety of different methods: experimental, descriptive, qualitative, analytical and empirical. The challenge remains that regulations are not designed to be researched, and the results of research may be ignored if they are not what was wanted. Given that we are in a period of regulatory flux, the importance of evidence-based policy should be paramount.
Hall of Fame Inductions
Following the oration, the Director of the Hall, Dr Phillip Cobbin, then conducted the formal inductions, which comprised citations being read by nominators followed by responses from inductees and the presentation of scrolls to each inductee by Stephen Taylor.
- Jayne Godfrey is a highly respected academic with contributions to international and national standard-setting and standards-application in financial accounting and water accounting; to international and national accounting academic and professional membership bodies; academic research, education, governance and management; and to gender equity in accounting academia.
- Ian McPhee AO PSM served as Auditor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia for the maximum ten-year term, 2005-2015. For over four decades, he has made outstanding contributions to the Australian Public Service, the Australian public, Australian and international standard-setting, and the accounting profession. In doing so, he has brought the importance of professional ethics and behaviour to the fore. In his tenure as Auditor-General, he championed the importance of performance audits to enhance government efficiency and accountability.