Ethical Issues In Accounting

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Ethics has become a more central issue in the field of accounting in the past decade, due to the Enron scandal and other similar ethics breaches at large corporations. One of the results of this newfound focus on ethics is the recent rewriting of the Code of Ethics of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA, which is the American national association for certified public accountants), in order to better educate practicing accountants on acceptable practice. Another is a greater interest in how ethics are incorporated into the education of prospective accountants, raising questions such as whether addressing ethics within and across a variety of accounting courses is adequate, or if a separate course devoted entirely to …show more content…

Considering why unethical choices are made aids in creating solutions that will be efficacious; solutions that do not address the root causes of the problem are less likely to result in change. One reason an accountant might not make an ethical decision in a particular circumstance is lack of knowledge; he or she may not know what the ethical choice in that situation is. Another reason an accountant might do something unethical is lack of prudence; he or she may know the ethical actions that should be taken, but choose unethically, either because they are being pressured by others to do so--and perhaps threatened with the loss of significant income or even their job--or simply for his or her own personal or company gain. These underlying roots of breakdowns in ethics are important to keep in mind when thinking of ways to improve ethical …show more content…

On the negative side, these changes reach only new accountants planning to enter the field. On the positive side, the college environment allows for more thorough and in-depth approaches than, for instance, a one-time conference on accounting ethics. Two intriguing approaches to ethical study in accounting are gleaning knowledge from other fields in which ethics is of high importance (Liu, Hao, & Yu, 2012) and applying a religious form of pedagogy to its instruction (Van Hise & Massey,

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