Carolyn Břečťanová

Carolyn Břečťanová Director, Quality and Risk Management

„Sustainable business also includes quality and risk management”

In view of the changes in the external environment and of regulatory requirements, quality and risk management is essential for the adoption of appropriate decisions and plays a defining and crucial role in for sustainable business.

We act with integrity and uphold moral and ethical principles

We adhere to the highest professional standards as a basis on which we provide advice to our clients.

1. Our commitment towards clients

Our KPMG teams are made up of specialists equipped with relevant expertise and the necessary experience. We actively control all processes of each engagement and carefully monitor and point to agreed milestones and follow approved timetables. We work efficiently and make the most of our knowledge so that our cooperation with clients is as beneficial as possible and disturbs the clients' standard work flow as little as possible. We are available to address ad hoc issues throughout the year and can promptly react to the clients' needs.

We contact clients only with essential requests; our role is to support them and to finalise matters independently and not make them more complicated. We provide on-going feedback on the progress of each engagement and all matters that may impact on the clients’ decision-making. Straight-forward behaviour is the basis of open and sincere cooperation. If there is something we cannot do or if we know others who can do it better - we will say so. We always try to find win-win solutions.

We never charge unreasonable fees that would not, moreover, have been approved by our clients in advance. We look for synergies and opportunities for improvement and we pro-actively advise clients when they may save time and costs and mitigate risks.

2. We create and foster long-term client relationships

A designated client partner is responsible for the quality of all services provided to each particular client and may be contacted whenever clients need to do so. The partner coordinates the communication and relationship with the client and bears the responsibility for the client's satisfaction.

We help our clients to stay abreast of news and get together with them e.g. at conferences, training courses and seminars that we organise; we also prepare analyses, research and benchmarking studies for them.

3. Engagement work principles

In managing independence, we make use of a world-wide KPMG application, which records and monitors all KPMG investments including partners' and managers' private investments.

We also use a global electronic system for controlling independence and conflicts of interest, which allows us to review and approve business relations between KPMG and clients within our global network of KPMG offices. This helps ensure that KPMG member firm engagement teams provide only services which are not in conflict with our independence and impartiality.

KPMG member firms follow strict internal confidentiality guidelines regarding client-related information and all information obtained during engagements is considered confidential. All KPMG employees including administrative, support and technical department staff are obliged to maintain confidentiality. 

Quality and risk management principles and instruments

  • We have a comprehensive quality and risk management system in place, which fully complies with the International Standard on Quality Control (ISQC 1), the codes of ethics for auditors and accounting experts and attorneys-at-law, as well as rules required by international regulators.

In general, our quality management system rests on the following three pillars:

  • The firm’s management is responsible for our corporate culture, quality and risk management.
  • We only work for clients who do business in line with valid regulations and follow ethical business principles.

We use a global electronic system for controlling independence and potential conflict of interest, which monitors services provided not only to a specific company but also to its related entities.

For each individual client and every engagement, we assess the impacts of our cooperation on our firm’s reputation.

We apply clear rules and robust methodologies and adhere to high quality and expertise standards.

Every year, all employees complete mandatory training sessions and confirm their independence towards our audit clients.

Employees regularly participate in training courses focusing on legal compliance and ethical conduct.

Each of function comprises a broad methodological background and tools complying with regulatory requirements, and reflecting the newest trends in the given industry.

Annually employees participate in a range of expert training courses.

We invest into our employees’ development

Our employees are our main asset. To be able to offer the quality services and added value which our clients expect from us, we support a motivating and inspiring working environment and corporate culture. To adequately promote KPMG's reputation, employees need to adhere to our values. The recruitment of suitable candidates and their professional growth is crucial.

We apply efficient engagement management processes.

Each engagement is managed precisely in compliance with clear rules and set process procedures. Timely involvement of managers and partners into the engagement process is standard.

We are constantly striving for improvement.

The quality standard put in place involves regular annual KPMG review of selected engagements by staff of other member firms reviewing compliance with all internal corporate regulations.

All employees as well as any third party may make use of the KPMG Ethics Hotline to report issues or complain about unethical behaviour.

The Code of Ethics lays down the firm’s corporate culture and its values vital for a successful and sustainable business.

We want to play an important role in the cultivation of the entrepreneurial environment which is why we participate in projects designed to promote it.

  • Coalition for Transparent Business

    We are one of the founding members of the Coalition for Transparent Business, whose goal is the cultivation of a transparent entrepreneurial environment in the Czech Republic.

  • Recommendations for Public Tender Contractors

    We are a signatory of the Recommendations for Public Tender Contractors, which supports more transparent public tender and public contractor selection processes.

Knowledge Management

Zuzana Vovsová

Zuzana Vovsová Senior Manager, Knowledge Management

„Knowledge is at the heart of our business.

We are a knowledge-based organisation. To be able to provide premium services to our clients, we work hard on developing and sharing our knowledge.

Knowledge is at the heart of our business and embedded in everything we do.

The sharing of knowledge is crucial to us; hence we manage it not only within the offices of KPMG Česká republika, but also centrally for all member firms of KPMG’s global network through knowledge management processes.

The main knowledge management task of is to deliver to our colleagues the right information at the right time and within the right context, so as to enable them to provide our clients with quality and timely services.”

Our knowledge management principles:

  • Share your knowledge.
  • Be aware what you can and cannot share.
  • Keep the knowledge you share up-to-date and relevant.
  • Make it easy for others to find you and any non-documentable knowledge you may have.
  • Keep your personal data in the firm’s profiles updated.
  • Do not detain your knowledge in closed communities or systems.
  • Use uniform systems and applications for knowledge sharing.

The knowledge-sharing strategy has been built on three pillars – contents, the interconnectedness of people and a culture of sharing. At the same time, it is supported by organisational structure, technologies and change management.

Etika a transparentnost

We share content

We make internal know-how sources (methodologies, policies, templates) as well as external information sources available to our colleagues (e.g. information on companies, interconnectedness of companies by assets, industrial analyses, news releases).

Etika a transparentnost

We interconnect our employees

We interconnect our employees and accelerate the sharing of information through instruments such as KPMG's intranet called (Portal) or internal social network (the Hub).

Etika a transparentnost

We make use of technologies

We take advantage of all global knowledge sharing tools throughout KPMG. At the same time, we look for other ways to effectively share information when central tools are not enough. Here, it is crucial to watch out for possible system or data duplicities.

Etika a transparentnost

The culture of sharing

We have an organisational structure in place and assigned roles and responsibilities that support knowledge sharing.

We want our colleagues to be able to confidently and comfortably ask for advice and information that they themselves might not have. We teach our employees that they lose nothing if they share their knowledge, but that instead all will gain and the firm will move forward faster.

We support peer-centred learning. Our Knowledge Café offers a platform for informal discussions of topics that unite us across the firm. The Knowledge Café offers presentations on noted topics, exchanges of knowledge and lively discussions.

Knowledge Management tools

KPMG Portal

Portál KPMG

Our intranet is a central place featuring information that helps employees in their work.

It contains our entire internal know-how, methodologies, processes and sample statements.

The Portal serves as a guide, directing people to professional and administrative applications.

It connects all member firms of KPMG’s global network – its entire content is accessible to all employees all over the world.

HUB (internal social network)

Interní sociální síť HUB

The HUBis an internal communication and cooperation tool for all employees of the global KPMG network.

There are total of 1 600 discussion groups on various topics on the HUB.

There are 59 077 registered employees from the member firms of the global KPMG network.

At KPMG in the Czech Republic, more than 50% of employees are registered on the HUB, 51% of registered employees regularly visit the HUB for new information and 42% of them actively create the HUB’s content.

Knowledge Base

Interní sociální síť HUB

The need to safely and effectively share of engagement outputs, references or complete proposal presentations led to a project which resulted in the successful introduction of the Knowledge Base platform. Colleagues from the advisory departments can now quickly search and find the results of their predecessors’ work. The next phase of the project will involve the creation of a competency data base, enabling users to locate a colleague with a given competency, while the system will immediately generate a CV of the found expert to be used in proposals and tender procedures.

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