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Importance of professional ethics in accounting profession
Why ethics is so crucial for the accounting profession
Why ethics is so crucial for the accounting profession
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The CPA Journal is a broadly recognized professional journal aimed at public practitioners, management, educators, and other accounting professionals. The New York State Society of CPAs has published the journal on a monthly basis since the 1930s. The journal takes a focused and in-depth look at issues affecting the financial world and provides analysis, perspective, and debate on such major topics as accounting, auditing, taxation, finance, management, technology, and professional ethics. Their stated goal is to provide CPAs and other accounting professionals with the information and news that enables them to be successful in today 's practice environments. Unlike non-academic articles, the articles published in the Journal have passed through …show more content…
This reflects in the content of each article’s practical approach and thorough analysis on various relevant topics in the different fields of accountancy. For instance, under the Essentials section, the reader will find a theme of issues causing a state of transformation within the profession. Since, “The popular press constantly exposes one ethical lapse after another, such as the many recent corporate accounting scandals, cheating scandals in academic research, and organized cheating on college campuses (54). “There is no question that ethical scandals are all around us.” “The State of Ethics in Business and the Accounting Profession,” authors address the issue that is on many businesses, accounting academics, and practitioners’ minds. Can ethics can be taught, whether the profession is placing proper emphasis on the teaching of ethics, and whether the current approach is the correct one. Where the “The Basic Field Guide to Fraud,” focuses on the effect of what happens when the ethical structure of a profession breaks down. “We have seen — with Enron and others — how quickly an unethical environment can destroy value for innocent stakeholders, as well as how swiftly a company can crumble.” The effects of ethical behavior in accounting are far reaching in the economy. Every business entity has an accounting professional provide information at some point in the organization’s life cycle. The cause and effect portrayed in the flow of the two article’s relationship gives the reader an informative analysis of an issue that seems to be plaguing the accounting
Ethics plays a vital role in developing accurate and high quality financial statements for management, financial institutions, and investors. As management utilizes financial statements to make decisions regarding the operations of the business, it is necessary to review accurate financial statements to make strategic decisions about the future of the organization. Investors and financial institutions require accurate financial statements to make informed decisions upon whether to invest funds into the organization or the wisdom of lending funds to said organization.
The non-profit professional organization, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), was founded in the United States of America. The organization was founded in 1887, to help ensure that the accounting profession would gain the same respect as the other prestigious occupations had received from the public. The accounting profession, similar to the medical, legal, and engineering professions, is characterized by “…rigorous educational requirements [150 credit hours], high professional standards, a strict code of professional ethics, licensing status [Uniform CPA Examination], and a commitment to serving the public interest” (AICPA, 2016). These five characteristics
The goal of the Codification is to simplify the organization of thousands of authoritative U.S. accounting pronouncements issued by multiple standard-setters. To achieve this goal, the FASB initiated a project to integrate and topically organize all relevant accounting pronouncements issued by the U.S. standard-setters including those of the FASB, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), and the Emerging Issues Task Force (EITF)
Throughout the past several years major corporate scandals have rocked the economy and hurt investor confidence. The largest bankruptcies in history have resulted from greedy executives that “cook the books” to gain the numbers they want. These scandals typically involve complex methods for misusing or misdirecting funds, overstating revenues, understating expenses, overstating the value of assets or underreporting of liabilities, sometimes with the cooperation of officials in other corporations (Medura 1-3). In response to the increasing number of scandals the US government amended the Sarbanes Oxley act of 2002 to mitigate these problems. Sarbanes Oxley has extensive regulations that hold the CEO and top executives responsible for the numbers they report but problems still occur. To ensure proper accounting standards have been used Sarbanes Oxley also requires that public companies be audited by accounting firms (Livingstone). The problem is that the accounting firms are also public companies that also have to look after their bottom line while still remaining objective with the corporations they audit. When an accounting firm is hired the company that hired them has the power in the relationship. When the company has the power they can bully the firm into doing what they tell them to do. The accounting firm then loses its objectivity and independence making their job ineffective and not accomplishing their goal of honest accounting (Gerard). Their have been 379 convictions of fraud to date, and 3 to 6 new cases opening per month. The problem has clearly not been solved (Ulinski).
What does ethics have to do with accounting? Everything, since there have been some recent financial accounting scandals; a few examples being Xerox, WorldCom, Enron, which have generated much unwanted and unfavorable publicity for CPA's, including those working as controllers or chief financial officers for organizations.
While some scholars argue for more teaching of ethics in college curriculum, others argue that a business culture or environmental change is needed. Some experts and experienced members of the field argue that business is not an inherently bad field, but that the reputation has been soiled by a few bad apples. Given all this information, I tend to agree with the argument that finance and business are not bad fields, they have just been soiled by a few evil people. I believe there are several bad businesses such as the Nestlé Corporation; and good businesses like Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that prove cases of evil and corrupt business practices can be linked to the actions of a few evil people in power. I find this argument to be relevant and interesting because unethical business practices often appear in the news, and this influences the public perspective on businesses. Many people tend to think most businessmen are evil, greedy, and corrupt. This is not always the case, and I aim to demonstrate why others should think in the same
...urvey of ethical behavior in the accounting profession. Journal of Accounting Research, 9 (2), pp. 287-306.
American Express Tax & Business Services, a subsidiary of the American Express Corporation acquired CPA practices all over the United States. This practice by a non-CPA firm can encourage its employees not to serve the public interest as the firm is not subjected to as many regulations as a CPA firm would be. A financial firm providing accounting services poses a conflict of interest for its CPA employees. For example, the CPA provides accounting services along with financial services like insurance sales. The CPA would be endorsing the insurance products of the company which can affect the CPA’s objectivity with respect to the product being offered to third-parties (Ponemon, 1996). The scope and nature of the services performed influence the accountant to great lengths.
While this is an ambiguous subject, wracked with speculation and ambivalence, it is an appealing topic of study. A curious facet of the ethical dilemma is that it transcends various fields of interest. The ethics issue is scrutinized by philosophers and psychologists, but this theme is frequently introduced in other curricula. Accounting, for example, has its own set of ethical mandates. Moreover, nearly every profession is impacted by a generally accepted code of ethics – doctors, lawyers, contractors, and the list goes on! In fact, almost every day an individual is confronted with a moral decision.
Professional standards are defined as the legal or ethical duty of a professional in a particular field to exercise the level of diligence, skill, and care as stipulated in the code of practice. Normally, an individual is expected to be consistent with what other professionals in the practice are engaging in to comply with the expectation of the profession. On the other hand, institutional ethics is defined as the application, evaluation and articulation of values and moral principles that are related to the organization’s procedures, practices, and policies (Holloway & Wheeler, 2013). Perhaps, in the case studies below, health care institutions and professionals are involved thus prompting the need to examine their
As an individual and ambitious accounting student with plans to pursue a career in public accounting, I recognize the importance of understanding my core personal values and behaviors that guide the ethical principles of my everyday actions. I recognize that I have a responsibility to myself, family, future colleagues, future clients, and the general public to follow certain guidelines and conduct myself in an ethical manner. Furthermore, I acknowledge the idea that ethical dilemmas will occur, but I am committed to my “Personal Code of Ethical Values” (as seen above) that represent my desire to live ethically in every facet of my life.
Ethics play a vital role in day-to-day living from work to home. The ability to recognize ethical dilemmas and apply ethical theories to resolve ethical dilemmas is essential part of an individual 's psychological, physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. The purpose of this paper is to explore the strengths and weakness of the American Psychological Association (APA) code of ethics, apply and evaluate the eight-step ethical decision-making model, discuss the role of deontology in ethical reasoning, resolution, and multicultural issues in the case study.
The quantity of accounting fraud cases keeps on rising. Fraud is a consistent thing that will reliably be around, and in a bigger number of routes than just a single. An extensive apportion of organizations out there fight with fraud, either from within the organization, or from outside the organization. Knowing how to manage this is essential for an organization to be productive over a drawn out extended period of time. The investigation regarding the matter of accounting fraud will utilize sources from the web and the DeVry school library. The principle territory we are planning to address is accounting fraud and how it could impact an organization by answering, the who, what, when and how. Its goal is to increase the awareness
In 1887, the American Association of Public Accountants was formed with the first standardized tests coming out about a decade later (Zeff, 2003, pg. 2). In 1896, New York State passed the first law for Certified Public Accountants (CPA), which Zeff (2003) “marked the beginning of an accredited profession of accounting in the United States” (pg 2). In Canada, the first association began in 1902 with the Dominion Association of Chartered Accountants (Buckstein, part 1 pg 2). Buckstein quoted John L. Carey, the author of a paper outlining the history of the accounting profession worldwide stated “the reason for creating a full-fledged professional organization was to distinguish skilled accountants of integrity from self-styled accountants whose competence had not been demonstrated” (pg. 2) As Zeff (2003) stated with the passage of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 all publicly traded companies were now required to have their financials audited by independent CPA’s (pg. 4). This showcased the importance of having skilled and knowledgeable individuals produce verifiable and accurate information that the public (in all its forms) could rely upon. The combination of having professional accounting bodies and government legislations have attempted to establish
This paper discusses the role of ethics in corporate governance. I seek to show the application of moral and ethical principles in corporate governance. Ethics is a topic that has generated a lot of interest in the last decade especially after high profile scandals. The failures of prominent companies such as WorldCom, Enron, Merrill lynch and Martha Stewart portrays the lack of corporate ethics. The failure of such business has seen an increased pressure to incorporate ethics in corporate governance. The result of corporate scandals has been eroding investor and public confidence. The entire economic system has experienced some form of stress from loss of capital, a falling stock market and business failures.