The Importance Of Accounting

This essay will address two key areas, firstly, the aspect of rules and regulations acting in the public interest that I learned from previous modules with University of Sheffield and practiced while I was an intern. The second part will identify relevant perspectives from this module which includes current regulations used by the accounting profession, ethics and conceptual framework and critically assess my changed perception because of MGT390.

Past Experiences

From my previous modules at University of Sheffield such as Budgeting and Control, Auditing and Advance Financial Accounting, I understood that accounting standards was undisputedly useful for the public. In addition from papers such as <> by Levitt (1998) who states that high quality accounting standards allow educated investors to have relevant and useful information and thus will be able to make rational decision. Thus, I had formed the opinion that accounting standards are an objective part of financial reporting as they allow retail investors who generally lack the resources and ability to gain the otherwise unavailable information to make well-informed decisions and to also ensure that their investments in a business is validated.

Likewise, from my personal work experiences I observed that my ex-colleagues were solely concerned about adhering to corporate governance. Since I was an intern, this meant that they were my mentors, as such; the notion to comply with the regulations set out by Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants (ISCA) in Singapore and regulations set within the company was ever more heavily inculcated in me. I thought that as long as I comply with the regulations I am serving the public inter...

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... and is affected in a certain ways by the differences in various religion, ethics, gender and culture.

Regulations may not be useful due to the lack of consistencies (e.g. Islamic versus western accounting as mentioned) and hence the need for conceptual framework. Likewise, education plays an important role in preventing other financial scandals by instilling professional ethics in college or as part of corporate training and development. Even though, education is not able to convince naturally unethical participants, I believe it is able to redirect majority of them to reconsider about their action or superior’s action in order to make a judgement for themselves on the subject of unethicality.

By doing so we are then able to refine and unify the systems used in the preparations of financial statements and thus helping the public make investment decisions wisely.