Ethics Director Full Time

We’re Gravita: the accountants fuelling ambitious businesses. We’re a full service, tech-enabled firm, working with entrepreneurs and businesses to help them achieve their goals, and make an impact in the world.

We’re growing fast and are bringing like-minded advisors together to form a full-service tech-enabled accounting partner for thousands of SMEs. Our team use their incredible expertise alongside intuitive technology to help businesses and entrepreneurs plan better and grow faster.

Our mission is to become the UK’s leading tech-enabled accounting firm for SMEs. We have ambitious goals and our high-calibre team work hard to achieve them. We are one team with one agenda, working collaboratively in a respectful environment to deliver a great service to our clients. So if you join us, you’ll not only be working on exciting client challenges, you’ll also be helping us shape the future of accounting.

The Role

To lead and own the firm’s ethics and independence framework, ensuring full compliance with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales Code of Ethics and Financial Reporting Council Ethical Standard, while embedding a strong ethical culture across the firm.

The role has end-to-end accountability for ethics, including both personal and corporate independence, and acts as the firm’s senior subject matter expert and decision-maker on ethical matters.

This is a Director-level leadership role with firm-wide remit.

• Head of Ethics: Owns design, implementation, and operation of the ethics framework
• Chief Legal & Risk Officer: Provides oversight, challenge, and escalation point

The role operates as a trusted adviser to partners and senior leadership, not solely a compliance function.

Key Responsibilities

Ethics & Independence Framework Ownership

• Design and maintain a firm-wide ethics and independence framework aligned with professional and regulatory standards
• Translate principles-based regulation into clear, practical policies and guidance
• Ensure integration with wider risk, audit quality, and governance frameworks

Personal & Corporate Independence

• Own both personal independence (partners and staff) and corporate/firm independence (entity-level relationships and services)
• Oversee and continuously improve:
• Financial interests monitoring
• Partner/staff independence declarations
• Firm independence assessments (including network considerations)
• Act as final decision-maker on complex independence matters

Ethics Advisory & Decision-Making

• Act as the firm’s central authority on ethical matters
• Provide advice to partners and engagement teams on:
• Independence threats and safeguards
• Conflicts of interest
• Non-audit services
• Client acceptance and continuance
• Exercise judgement on high-risk or sensitive cases, escalating only where appropriate

Conflicts & Ethical Risk Management

• Oversee conflicts identification, assessment, and resolution processes
• Approve high-risk engagements and manage ethical risk exposure
• Ensure robust documentation and defensibility of decisions

Culture, Training & Behaviour

• Lead the development of a strong ethical culture across the firm
• Design and deliver training tailored to partners, managers, and staff
• Promote ethical decision-making frameworks rather than rule-based compliance
• Support and strengthen speak-up / whistleblowing mechanisms

Monitoring, Assurance & Continuous Improvement

• Establish and lead an ethics monitoring and assurance programme
• Conduct thematic reviews (e.g. independence compliance, conflicts handling)
• Identify systemic risks and implement improvements

Regulatory Engagement & Inspection Readiness

• Ensure compliance with applicable ethical and independence standards
• Act as lead contact for ethics-related aspects of regulatory inspections
• Support responses to findings and remediation actions

Breaches, Investigations & Enforcement

• Oversee identification, investigation, and resolution of ethics breaches
• Determine appropriate remediation and disciplinary outcomes (with HR where appropriate)
• Ensure lessons learned are embedded into policy and training

Governance & Reporting

• Provide regular, high-quality reporting to:
• Chief Legal & Risk Officer
• Appropriate governance Boards and Committees
• Develop and maintain ethics MI, including:
• Breaches and incidents
• Independence compliance metrics
• Query volumes and themes

Qualifications, Knowledge & Experience

Deep expertise in:

• ICAEW Code of Ethics
• FRC Ethical Standard
• Significant experience in audit, risk, or compliance within a professional services firm
• Demonstrable experience handling complex independence and ethical judgement calls
• Strong ability to influence senior stakeholders, including partners
• Experience building or transforming frameworks

Leadership & Behavioural Expectations

• Operates with authority and independence of judgement
• Able to challenge senior stakeholders constructively
• Balances commercial awareness with ethical integrity
• Seen internally as a trusted, pragmatic adviser rather than a blocker

Your Career with Gravita

When you join Gravita, we’ll support you on your own growth journey. We want to be the place you learn, grow and unlock your true potential.

We’ll work with you to build a progression plan to outline how you’ll grow at our company and everything we’ll do to help you get there. We’re also passionate about learning and development, to help you focus on your future.

The Nitty Gritty

• Our standard working week is a 37.5-hour week on a hybrid basis
• Core working hours are 10am – 4pm Monday to Friday
• Flexible working and happy employees are at the top of our list here at Gravita and we have been working hard to support our teams through the fast-paced changes.
• Your development won’t be forgotten, our development support is extraordinary for a firm of our size.
• It’s a busy, fast-paced environment here at Gravita. Feel free to check out our social media channels (Instagram, X, LinkedIn and Glassdoor).