As you’re well aware, the excitement around social media has infested our lives to the point of nausea. It may have taken awhile but it appears that the largest accounting firms have come to grips with this and are attempting to embrace it – albeit in an awkward hug where your bodies finds itself in a strange contortion.

As a result of this warming up to all things social media, at least one firm – KPMG – has decided that some explicit reminders were appropriate as part of their annual ethics and compliance training. A Kamper submitted the following query:

There’s a new section this year on social media in the KPMG annual ethics and compliance training. I’m in process of going through it right now, but the summary asks:

Do you ‘friend’ your clients or vendors?
Do you Twitter about the engagement you’re on?
Do you blog about your work environment

You may want to think twice and make sure you are following the applicable firm policies and exercising good judgment before you post that next entry.

Our source brings up a good point – Gen Y types should be aware that anything they Tweet, post to FB or to a blog could easily seen by their firm’s Internet reputation teams (these are real, aren’t they?) so the message here could fall into the “common sense” bucket, akin to the three martini lunch. Perhaps these instructions are for the older Klynveldians that aren’t so social media savvy that have discovered a new outlet for venting but aren’t yet familiar with the potential repercussions.

While we can neither confirm nor deny the admin statistics, it is clear that KPMG has put everyone on notice that firing you for your idiotic workplace-related status updates is fair game.

The full blog is available at goingconcern.com.