Review of Accounting Ethics

Review of Accounting Ethics

Given the corporate ethical breaches in recent times, assess whether or not you believe that the current business and regulatory environment is more conducive to ethical behavior. Provide support for your answer.

Unethical behavior has drawn the attention of the public for the few last decades in all kinds of business. Many transformations in the business environment have taken place, including immoral conducts and the tendency for corruption. Unethical accounting behavior is also included as a consequence. So the government has been forced to increase regulations and inspect actions taken in business, most especially after the Enron, Tyco, WorldCom and other unethical accounting scandals. As a result of the mentioned scandals, the government then passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 providing regulatory requirements for better precision in business action, accountability and assurance of ethical accounting behavior by publicly held companies and accounting firms. According to Calle (2000), the total number of boards of directors who set ethical codes of conduct within organizations has increased from 41 percent in 1991 to 78 percent.

According to the Wall Street Journal about 79 percent of youth in the United States do not believe in the presence of moral principles in business. There should be a business foundation, especially in accounting which should provide society with adequate information about companies and industry. Accounting is more and more involved in consulting, so it requires high ethical standards to built trust between clients and companies (Calle, 2000).

Even if society does not believe in the honesty in any business, I think that ethics and ethical behavior are very high priorities for companies today and this is proofed by the increasing number of companies currently applying ethical codes of conducts. Codes of ethics are arrangements that are frequently used as a force to promote ethical behavior. There are...