The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals trust is faltering globally. Fear that leaders lie to us is at an all-time high. There’s been an unprecedented decline in employer trust and 61% of survey respondents hold grievances against business, government and the wealthy.

Trust is a crucial asset for accounting professionals – and, indeed, any organisation. Once established, it can strengthen relationships and reputation. On the flipside, when it’s betrayed, whether through deceit or unfulfilled promises, it can trigger financial consequences, as well as long-term damage to credibility. 

How can organisations and individuals cultivate trust or rebuild it once it’s lost? These three TED Talks offer some suggestions.

1. 7 Tools for Building a Business People Trust

Run time: 13 mins

What it’s about: Would you ask a stranger to collect your children from school and drive them across town? Or would you invest in a business that offers such a service? To many parents, the idea seems absurd yet that’s precisely the business model of student transportation platform HopSkipDrive. In this video, digital trust adviser Marcos Aguiar lists seven tools that businesses can use to build trust. These include implementing safeguards to monitor access. HopSkipDrive, for example, limits who can and can’t join its driver network by running background checks, having a rigorous safety program and a zero-tolerance incident policy (regardless of how minor). Another tool is control. Aguiar explains how Uber directs the routes its drivers take to ensure customers receive the most cost- and time-efficient journey. When designing any system, he believes businesses can use these and other tools, incorporating both digital and human elements, to foster trust.

2. How Your Brain Responds to Stories – And Why They're Crucial for Leaders

Run time: 14 mins

What it’s about: When you hear someone tell a story, you may put yourself in someone else’s shoes as though you are experiencing the event. In these circumstances the listener tends to naturally develop empathy. The more empathy you feel, the more oxytocin – the feel-good chemical – is released in your brain. Higher oxytocin levels make you perceive the speaker as more trustworthy. This is why storytelling is such a powerful leadership tool, says leadership development consultant Karen Eber. In this video, she explains how our brains respond to stories compared with data and offers advice for using both to convey your message in a way that people actually listen.

3. How to Build (And Rebuild) Trust

Run time: 15 mins

What it’s about: Trust sits at the core of everything we do, but what happens when it’s broken? In this talk, Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei explores the fundamentals of trust: how to establish it, sustain it and repair it when it falters. Drawing from her experience in helping to rebuild trust at Uber – an organisation that famously recovered from controversies related to a toxic culture and legal and regulatory challenges – Frei explores three factors she believes are essential to trust: authenticity, logic and empathy. When even one of these pillars “wobbles”, she says, trust is threatened. She explains the common causes of such wobbles and offers simple strategies for overcoming them, so individuals and businesses alike can build and maintain trust.