Across Asia, sustainability disclosures are moving from aspiration to expectation and from policy design to real-world delivery. That transition brings opportunity. It also brings pressure.
Earlier this year, Eco-Business captured candid reflections from chief sustainability officers on what is likely to keep them awake at night in 2026. Budget pressures, policy delays and rising scepticism, even if less pronounced than in other regions, sit alongside fragile data, greenwashing risks and growing exposure as scrutiny and accountability intensify. Sustainability is no longer a secondary topic on the agenda. But neither is it an easy one.
What is often less visible in these conversations is the ethical dimension beneath many of these challenges: the judgments professionals must make when information is incomplete, incentives are misaligned or expectations collide. In Asia, where sustainability reporting and assurance are advancing rapidly, ethics is no longer theoretical. It is a practical necessity.
Professional pressure points
The concerns raised by sustainability leaders across Asia are familiar to those working on the ground and in the field.
Data quality remains a major bottleneck. Information is difficult to obtain, evaluate and assure, often requiring reliance on third-party data, emerging measurement techniques and external experts whose work may be essential but difficult to evaluate with confidence.
Greenwashing risks have also evolved. It is now less about blatant misrepresentation and more about selective disclosure, overconfidence in immature models, or pressure to present a coherent narrative before systems are ready. Revisions to estimates, targets and plans frequently follow.
Combined with policy uncertainty, tightening resources and heightened scrutiny from regulators, investors and civil society, these pressures explain why sustainability professionals often feel exposed and at times, alone. What unites them is not a lack of commitment or competence, but the reality that sustainability work demands frequent, high-stakes judgment calls under pressure and with imperfect information.
Asia’s leadership and complexity
Asia is playing a leading role in the global sustainability landscape and, as a result, is also at the forefront of addressing these challenges. Across the region, there is strong regulatory momentum, early adoption of international sustainability reporting, assurance and ethics standards, and a clear commitment to market integrity and trust.
Leadership, however, also brings responsibility and complexity.
Sustainability information differs from traditional financial information in ways that directly affect professional judgment. It is forward-looking, model-based and often dependent on assumptions and data drawn from across value chains. Judgments about climate transition pathways, biodiversity impacts and long-term risks do not always fit neatly into existing systems or controls.
In Asia, these challenges are compounded by a distinctive regional feature. In several jurisdictions, sustainability reporting and assurance are performed not only by professional accountants, but also by other specialists and non-accountants. In some markets, more than half of sustainability assurance engagements are already carried out by non-professional accountants.
This reflects market realities and the interdisciplinary nature of sustainability, but it also raises a critical question. How do we ensure consistent ethical behavior, independence and trust across a rapidly expanding and diverse ecosystem? These questions are being answered daily by professionals navigating complex choices. It is no surprise that some of these dilemmas keep sustainability leaders awake at night.
Practical needs
The good news is that ethics, and in particular robust ethics and independence standards, provide a framework for navigating exactly these situations.
The International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA) is the global standard-setter for ethics and independence for professionals involved in reporting and assuring financial and non-financial information, including sustainability information. Its standards, already adopted or in the process of being adopted across many Asian jurisdictions, provide a practical toolkit to help professionals identify, assess and respond to ethical threats in real-world situations. They support judgment when information is incomplete, pressure is high, incentives pull in different directions and responsibility is shared across teams and disciplines.
Strong ethical standards help professionals address threats to integrity, objectivity, professional competence and independence long before they crystallise into failures or reputational damage.
A common, global ethical baseline is also fundamental when assurance is performed by practitioners with different professional backgrounds. If the same sustainability information is relied upon by investors and markets, ethical expectations should not depend on who performs the work, but under which standard they operate. The public interest demands a level playing field.
Learning from dialogue
One of the most striking takeaways from IESBA’s engagement across Asia has been the maturity of the thinking and the dialogue. Regulators, professional bodies, firms, and sustainability leaders are not questioning whether ethics matters. They are asking how it can be applied effectively, proportionately and consistently in practice.
Questions around scalability, value-chain complexity, the use of experts and the interaction between sustainability and financial reporting are operational, not abstract. They require practical support, clarity and ongoing dialogue. Ethics standards cannot be static, just like doing the right thing isn’t simply about knowing what is right. They must be supported, explained, tested against real-world experience and refined where necessary. Implementation is where trust is earned or lost.
Supporting the next phase
As sustainability reporting and assurance mature across Asia, the focus is shifting from adoption to application. That shift requires sustained commitment from regulators, firms, professional bodies and standard setters alike.
It also requires recognising that ethics is not a compliance hurdle, but an enabler of resilience and trust. It supports better judgment, stronger cultures of challenge and the confidence to pause when something does not feel right, even under pressure.
For sustainability professionals navigating uncertainty, ethics provides something increasingly valuable: a compass.
Asia’s leadership in sustainability is real and well-earned. Maintaining it will depend not only on technical frameworks, but on the ethical foundations that allow those frameworks to function as intended. In a volatile world, trust is not built once. It is built continuously, decision by decision.
And that is a responsibility we all share.
Gabriela Figueiredo Dias is the chair of the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA) and the co-CEO of the International Foundation for Ethics and Audit, the organisation that houses the IESBA and the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB). She ensures that IESBA activities maintain a public interest focus, while developing high-quality ethics and independence standards.
