Ethic in Accounting

Ethics in Accounting

Linh Pham

University of Mount Olive

Author Note

This research paper was prepared for ACC483, taught by Professor Henry Singletary.

Ethics in Accounting

Ethics in Accounting has recently attracted a lot of attention in the field of business. Based on my knowledge, ethics in accounting are the behavior or actions that doesn’t allow for intentionally inaccurate and false in accounting practices. This is quite complex because we not only have to follow the accounting rules, but also need to make decisions based on the moral or ethics principles. However, ethics varies by cultures, individual perceptions, religion. For example, what seems about right in one country could be totally wrong in another country. Or what you think is right may actually be wrong. Therefore, it’s really difficult for us to follow the same ethics principle and apply those principles to ethics in accounting practices. In this paper, I will bring a thorough discussion of how to make accounting behaviors become more ethical.

Ethics in Accounting is what we really need to take into our consideration in this era, especially after the financial and accounting failures of many big firms such as Enron, WorldCom, AOL, Global Crossing, Tyco, Lehman and AIG. As a matter of fact, experts and analysts are trying to find out the root causes of these failures. It is also significant to realize that more and more fraud cases are detected in this era. Therefore, there is a big question that has been raised up: Are we facing a huge moral and ethical problem? I believe the answer for this question is “Yes”. And I think it is time to change the situation by reestablishing ethical practices in accounting.

There are many ways to reestablish ethical practices in accounting and regain its moral foundation, and one of the most proper way is to introduce ethics to students more frequently. Nowadays, the emerging demands of revenue growth in many companies might bring up a real issue to...