Abstract. The article reviewed was Possible Ethical Issues and Their Impact on The Firm: Perceptions Held by Public Accountants. The abstract demonstrates the importance of AICPA’ “Code of Professional Ethics” and its components, and the influence of management perceptions on firms’ ethical environment (p. 919).
Introduction. The authors study business ethics, compliance with ethics code, ethical issues, and ethical behavior of company management. The researchers concern with ethical believes of company employees and executives, and growing number of legal proceedings due to ethical issues. The ethics code help professionals maintaining independence and great performance. The research aims to examine the impact of ethical dilemmas and unethical behavior on company operations (p. 919). The study is important because it analyzes the influence of accountants’ perceptions and their unprincipled behavior on business performance. The authors consider two problems: implications of unethical behavior and why the ethics is criticized.
Literature Review. The authors use a systematic review of literature in the research. The researchers examine studies of Frankel (1989), Backof and Martin (1991), and Beets (1991) to review the history of the progression of ethics in accounting industry. The accounting as other professions has its own ethics framework. The history of accounting profession demonstrates that competence, integrity, and independence always were essential to have a
In the world of business, it is so obvious that Certified Public Accountants are playing an extremely important role to the public. Working as Certified Public Accountants, it is so special that they provide accounting professional services not to a specific person but to the whole public. Therefore, the ethics and conducts of the Certified Public Accountants becomes much more important because it affects the reasonable operation and successful development of the whole industry. So, as a professional accountant, we need take the duties that required by the AICPA code of ethics --- “professional competence, confidentiality, integrity, and objectivity".
Financial reporting practices and ethics have manifested an ocean of literature. This has mainly come from organization theorists that address accounting practices. These theorists and professionals have given fresh accountability measures. Their ideals give this industry the tools needed to survive, grow and prosper. The way an organization prepares and reports its financial information and handles its daily operations is in essence financial practices, and in the way it accomplishes this reveals their ethical standards to which they adhere to. This paper will discuss the financial practices, ethical standards, and
Accountants are held to a higher ethical standards and they must performed their duties in compliance with standards or ethical values of honesty, integrity, objectivity, due care, confidentiality, which must be fully committed to. They must put clients or public interest first before their own. They must have and ethical values and maintain those values way beyond what the society or the company’s code of ethic. It is important that accountants’ behavior or ethical values is in conformity with the
The accounting system is constantly changing. During these changes, it is important for accountants to adhere to the high ethical standards that they have always lived by. Adhering to the high ethical standards is an accountant's obligation to the public, the profession, and themselves. An accountant's ethical conduct usually lies within four different areas. This includes competence, confidentiality, integrity, and objectivity. NYSSCPA.ORG states, "Members also have a continuing responsibility to cooperate with each other to improve the art of accounting, maintain the public's confidence, and carry out the professions special responsibilities for self-governance," (Article 1).
Accountants owe the duty to act in a professional and ethical manner concerning clients, as well an obligation to respect the laws that are involved with the profession. This is where a crossroads of ethics and legalities are formed and potentially the defining point of crucial decision-making. Stephen Richards and his actions under employment with Computer Associates (CA) are then examined in light of this concept.
D) Relevant ethical codes that can be applied to the articles (please be sure which code of ethics you are citing) and how you would apply such code(s).
Ethics can be defined as a set of values used to judge whether an action is morally right or wrong based on the duty and obligation of an individual (Hess, 2007). Hence, in view of a given task that has to be performed, we are able to judge the performance as being good or wrong based on some moral principles. Hutchings (2010) notes that ethics can be held by an individuals or a groups of people. This paper will be predicated on the thesis that both the utilitarianism and deontological viewpoints have potential to impact the accounting profession and have to be adopted with care.
Ethics in any industry is important, but for Accounting professionals and those in need of their services, it is a particularly stressed element. Information provided by accountants is used to make major decisions, including investing, downsizing, expanding, etc, so accountants are expected to be competent, reliable, and have a high degree of professional integrity. Because of these high expectations, the professional accountancy industry, like many other professions, has adopted professional codes of ethics (Woelfel, 1986). These ethical codes go above and beyond the requirements for state or federal laws and regulations. There are several professional organizations within the
There are many ethical codes and guidelines a supervisor should follow. One of the most important ethical codes refers to competency. The American Counseling Association (2014) and the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES) (2011) both reiterate the importance of competency professionally as a counselor and supervisor. Counselors are only to practice within their scope of competence. This is based on the counselor’s education, training, experience, and credentials (ACA, 2014). This includes experience and training as a supervisor. The ACES (2011) stated supervisors should only provide supervision for supervisees and clients that fall within their scope of training and expertise. The supervisor should be continually engaged in education to ensure continually competency (ACES, 2011). Competency is important because acting outside one’s level of competency puts the supervisor’s career at risk, can harm the supervisee, harm the client, and raise liability issues.
This study aims to understand what effect has an ethical framework in accounting. In particular, we examine the influence of ethics on earnings management, financial reporting, and external accounting. Today, the commercial environment reveals the unethical behavior of management and accountants through the manipulation of accounting records to boost the company’s stock price, falsified financial statements to mislead investors, failure of auditors to correct errors and omissions due to client’s pressure and personal material interests.
This assignment demonstrates why nurses who are working in the healthcare profession must work legally and ethically, describes some of the legislations and Tort laws that are directly associated with the nursing profession and also the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia’s (NMBA) Code of Ethics and Code of Professional Conduct. Failure to provide care within these parameters could lead to serious consequences for the patient and nurse themselves.
Ethical issues have greatly transformed in our lives since the great Enron, Xerox and other huge corporations proposed big profits showing earnings of billions of dollars and yet in reality facing bankruptcy. These corporations faced great trouble with the federals and state for manipulating financial statements. But not only corporations can be blamed on this, accounting firms were involved in this as much as the corporations were. With the business stand point, ethics comprises of principles and standards that guide behavior. Investors, traders, customers, and legal system determine whether a specific action is ethical or unethical. Ethical issue is a vast subject, but we will look at the niche
The interpretation of ethics is a subjective matter, and this is mostly due to disparities about its understanding and implications in different societies, cultures and countries. The term ethics includes a diverse array of items, which makes it an implicitly complicated topic. The dissertation focuses on the sub heading of ‘moral reasoning’ in ethics, and this section of the dissertation presents a critical review of the literature in relation to moral reasoning. The emphasis on moral reasoning of accountants is still debated and as a result there is conflicting literature present on the issue. In recent past, due to financial scandals, there has been an increased attention given to ethics and moral reasoning and
Many studies demonstrate the differences in financial reporting between the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and U.S. Standards. Nagle, Wasieleski, and Rau (2012) in their research focused on the code of ethics and moral duties of the company top management. The researchers studied the financial scandals and the recent financial crisis to demonstrate the gap between the market processes and accounting standards. The IFRS and U.S. GAAP differ in a contrary nature of accounting standards. GAAP is considered as rule-based standards, while IFRS viewed as a principle-based. Therefore, the professional judgment on financial improprieties is highly important (p. 479). Moreover, the code of ethics and systematic ethics trainings can diminish the inconsistencies from accounting policies (pp. 484-485).
Introduction. The authors study 2008 collapse of financial system to analyze the link between organizational values, social responsibility, and financial performance. Accounting and legal professionals argue that the current law and provisions are lack of ethics regulations. Experts state unethical financial decisions, inadequate disclosure, corrupted work of auditors contributed to economic breakdowns. The researchers see the necessity of building the sophisticated model of behavioral pattern of accounting and financial professionals, company management, and external auditors (pp. 15-16). The main objective of research is to determine key elements of ethical thinking of executives and accountants that consciously put the financial system in catastrophic situation. The study discusses cause-effect relationships between the ethical attitude and professional responsibility. The study is important because it investigates motivational objectives of accounting professionals, values of professional judgment, and actions that fail responsibility, integrity, and objectivity.