The following operating principles provide guidance to our employees, and embody our corporate culture:

• We are a client-centred organization and see ourselves as members of our clients’ teams, dedicated to ensuring that their needs and aspirations are fulfilled and that their problems are solved innovatively, expeditiously, and cost-effectively.

• We set and pursue the highest professional, business, and ethical standards, being able to exceed our clients’ expectations because we continually broaden our knowledge base, maintain superior technological expertise, have full understanding of our clients’ businesses, constantly view the challenges they face from the broadest possible perspective, and maintain our clients’ and the public’s confidence in us as trusted advisors through our personal and organizational conduct.

• Sustaining our competitiveness over time means we must be driven to continuously improve … to always have the business strategy, people, business processes, technology, industry and client knowledge, and the management systems necessary to meet the current and emerging needs of our clients; not resting on yesterday’s successes or today’s capabilities.

• The advice we provide to clients will always be appropriate for the scope of our assignment, and will be given with total objectivity.

• Our emphasis on “teamwork” with our clients is reinforced by our pursuit of an internal atmosphere of collegiality in our social and professional relationships with fellow employees, a collegiality rooted in individual trust and collective pride in the work we do.