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Movies have mesmerized audiences for years, crossing boundaries of race, gender, age, culture, and nationality. They have also been used to teach people how to lead. One text that zeroes in on the essence of leadership is The Leadership Challenge, by Kouzes and Posner (2002). Through their research, they have highlighted five practices of effective leaders. It is our intent to share how we apply movies to teach the tenets of the groundbreaking leadership research of Kouzes and Posner, with proven ideas that work with students of leadership in any setting.

Using movies to teach leadership is a winning strategy; however, diligent planning is required to incorporate them successfully into leadership education. Movies are entertaining, informative, energizing, and educational, if used skillfully. The more facilitators use film, the more skilled they will become and the more the participants will benefit.

This research aims to examine and understand the rationales and modalities behind the use of disclosure before, during and after a corporate governance scandal involving CPA Australia (CPAA).

Data beyond CPAA's annual reports were collected, such as news articles, media releases, an independent review panel (IRP) report, and the Chief Operating Officer's letter to members. These disclosures were manually coded and analysed through the word counts and word trees in NVivo. This study also relied on Norbert Elias' conceptual tool of power games among networks of actors – figurations – to model the scandal as a power game between the old Board, the press, concerned members, the IRP and the new Board. This study analysed the data to reveal a collective and in fieri power balance that changed with the phases of the scandal.

A mix of voluntary, involuntary, requested and absent disclosures was important in triggering, managing and ending the CPAA scandal. Moreover, communication and disclosure fulfilled a constitutive role since both: mobilised actors, enabled coordination among actors, contributed to pursuing shared goals and influenced power balances. Such a constitutive role was at the heart of the ability of coalitions of figurations to challenge and restore the powerful status quo.

This research introduces to accounting studies the collective and in fieri dimensions of power from figurational theory. Moreover, the research sheds new light on using voluntary, involuntary, requested and absent disclosures before, during and after a corporate crisis.