Students with their eyes set on consulting have not been deterred by the recent KPMG scandal, but say if given multiple job offers, they may preference a competitor.
Consulting giant KPMG admitted in May that senior staff had used confidential information from corporate clients to win business, the latest major scandal in the industry after another “big four” firm, PwC, in 2023 used confidential government intelligence to help multinational clients avoid taxes.
This masthead spoke with three students about whether the KPMG scandal in the firm’s audit division had affected their view of the company and of consulting as a career pathway.
Emma Halamkova, a second year student at UNSW, said she would not write off KPMG over the scandal, but may prioritise a job at another firm if offered the same role.
“A lot of these things happen in the real world,” she said. “It’s not inevitable, but it does happen, and you can’t look at one issue and say that makes up the whole company. It’s more so about how they respond and move forward.”
The bachelor of laws and commerce student said the scandal had a limited impact on her view of consulting as a career pathway and a way to make good social impact.
“Since I’m doing a double degree, nothing is certain, and there’s still an avenue for law, but I think consulting might be something for me,” she said.
Damon Kim, a first year student studying commerce and economics at UNSW, first heard about the scandal through a friend at his church group who previously worked at KPMG.
“They sent me an article and said, ‘look at what KPMG is doing, Damon, maybe you should try thinking of some other industries you could be going for as well’,” he said.
The scandal has somewhat shaded Kim’s perspective on consulting. But he said his experience working with university club 180 Degrees Consulting had reinforced the positive social impact a career in the industry could have and that he was eager to continue working towards it.
Demographer and social researcher Mark McCrindle said younger generations today were especially interested in finding an industry, career or place where they could have a positive social impact, but that they were also economically realistic and rational.
“They know they will move around firms during their careers, and just because a particular big brand has some bad PR, it doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily rule it out,” he said. “They won’t compromise on values like making a difference, but they’re a generation well aware of the debt they take on when studying, the earnings required for buying a first home, and they still want to make sure they can get opportunities to enter pathways and find work with purpose and meaning.”
Kim said his decision on which consulting firm to gain work experience with would ultimately be determined more by the specific role he was offered than the firm.
“Applying for grad roles and internships, there’s a saying that beggars can’t be choosers,” he said. “There’s always going to be scandals from my perspective, and there’s not many available opportunities to go into these big four consulting firms, so although KPMG has had a scandal recently, having it as work experience as a student is still very helpful, so I don’t think it necessarily deters anyone.”
The most recent Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) survey, which canvasses 120,000 students across all universities in Australia, found full-time employment rates for domestic undergraduates climbed slightly to 75.4 per cent in 2025 but remained below the peak of 79 per cent in 2023.
When it comes to the share of those with an undergraduate degree employed in a managerial or professional job shortly after completion, the figure has fallen to 67.3 per cent in 2025, down from 72.3 per cent in 2016.
Riddhesh Mehta, a third year commerce and information systems student, said he first read about the KPMG scandal a few weeks ago.
“I didn’t really do a deep dive into it because I know a couple of years prior, there was stuff about other big firms doing similar things, so it kind of felt like a normal thing,” he said.
If offered a role at KPMG and another firm, Mehta said he would probably choose the latter, but that overall, he remains eager to go into consulting.
“If KPMG is going through a legal matter, then I would personally go for the other firm, because I wouldn’t want anything bad to be on my resume,” he said. “A scandal at the top definitely affects the people underneath, but obviously, there are bad things in every single workplace. At the end of the day, if it’s what I enjoy, and I’m ethical and go into it with an open mind, it doesn’t really hinder my decision to go into consulting.”
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Millie Muroi is the economics writer at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. She was formerly an economics correspondent based in Canberra’s Press Gallery and the banking writer based in Sydney.Connect via X or email.
