Deloitte has released the Deloitte Bribery and Corruption Survey 2017 - Australia and New Zealand, which reports results from a survey of companies in New Zealand and Australia carried out in January and February 2017.

The third such survey, the report brings together the data from a survey with 145 respondents across the two countries. Deloitte New Zealand Forensic Leader Barry Jordan says "two-thirds to three-quarters" of the respondents would have been from New Zealand.

Mr Jordan says the survey respondents in 2017 were the same who participated in the 2015 survey, allowing tracking of changes in opinions and actions.

The biggest proportion (18%) of respondents were from the government/public sector in the two countries, followed by manufacturing/engineering (15%), "others" (12%) and financial services (11%). A majority - 62% - of respondents were at executive "C-suite" or Board level.

The report says about two-thirds of respondents saw reputational risk as the key downside of a bribery or corruption incident, and almost four out of five considered organisational culture key to preventing corruption.

When asked what they believed were the top three factors that can help prevent corruption incidents, just under 80% said "organisational culture", followed by "the 'tone at the top'" (40%), process controls (40%) and codes of conduct (30%).

The most common method identified by the respondents for discovery of instances of domestic corruption was tip-offs (around 32% in 2017, down from 40% in 2015), followed by internal controls process (just under 20% in 2017), "by chance" (about 15% in 2017) and management review (just under 10% in 2017).