Ethical Standards for Management Accountants
Ethics in any industry is important, but for Accounting professionals and those in need of their services, it is a particularly stressed element. Information provided by accountants is used to make major decisions, including investing, downsizing, expanding, etc, so accountants are expected to be competent, reliable, and have a high degree of professional integrity. Because of these high expectations, the professional accountancy industry, like many other professions, has adopted professional codes of ethics (Woelfel, 1986). These ethical codes go above and beyond the requirements for state or federal laws and regulations. There are several professional organizations within the
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According to Daniel F. Dooley (2008), a member of the Commercial Fraud Taskforce, financial fraud with private middle-market companies is on the rise. In fact, Mr. Dooley believes that he has seen more instances of fraud in the past two years than in the previous ten. He notes seven areas in which financial fraud has increased over the past few years:
• Borrowing Base Calculations for an Asset Based Loan
• Slow Processing of Accounts Receivable
• Raw Material and Components are being Supplied by Customers
• Short Payment of Accounts Receivable by Major Customers
• Untimely Clearing of Checks Paying “Customer” Contras
• Change in Inventory Valuation
• Financial Statements Not Consolidated using Accounting Software
On April 21, 2001, Lee Farkas, the former chairman of a private mortgage lending company, Taylor, Bean, & Whitaker (TBW), was convicted for his role in a more than $2.9 billion fraud scheme (Schoenberg, 2011). This action contributed to the failures of Colonial Bank, one of the 25 largest banks in the United States, and TBW, one of the largest privately held mortgage lending companies in the United States. According to court documents and evidence presented at the trial, Farkas and his co-conspirators engaged in a scheme that misappropriated more than $1.4 billion from Colonial Bank’s Mortgage Warehouse Lending division and
In this case, there are several conspirators who is involved in the fraud receiving punishment from either SEC or federal government. Robert Levin, the AMRE executive and major stockholder, and Dennie D.Brown, the company’s chief accounting officer, were subject to the punishment in the form of a huge amount of fine by the SEC and the federal government. This punishment came from reasons. After AMRE going public, the company have the obligation to publish its financial reports but its performance did not meet expectation. The investigation by SEC shows that Robert took the first step of this scam, fearing the sharp drop of AMRE’s stock price because of the poor performance of company. He abetted Brown, to practice three main schemes to present a false appearance of profitable and pleasant financial reports. Firstly, they instructed Walter W.Richardson, the company’s vice president of data processing, to enter fictitious unset leads in the lead bank and they originally deferred the advertising cost mutiplying “cost per lead” and “unset leads” amount, so that they deferred a portion of its advertising costs in an asset account. The capitalizing of advertising expenses allowed them to inflate the net income for the first quarter of fiscal 1988. Secondly, at the end of the third and fourth quarters of fiscal 1988, they added fictitious inventory to AMRE’s ending inventory records, and prepared bogus inventory count sheets for the auditors. Thirdly, they overstated the percentage
Phar-Mor, Inc was a thriving discount grocery store in the late 1980’s. Phar-Mor was moving product quickly but profit margins were not significant enough to pay the bills. By the early 1990’s, Phar-Mor declared bankruptcy due to fraudulent financial reporting and misappropriation of assets, making it one of the largest frauds in U.S. history. Below, we will use auditing standard AU 316.85 Appendix A in conjunction with the video “How to Steal $500 million” to analyze how incentives/pressures, opportunities, and attitudes/rationalizations allowed for fraud to start and continue at Phar-Mor.
When auditing a publicly held company, auditors need to observe principles. The ethical principles of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Code of
Financial reporting practices and ethics have manifested an ocean of literature. This has mainly come from organization theorists that address accounting practices. These theorists and professionals have given fresh accountability measures. Their ideals give this industry the tools needed to survive, grow and prosper. The way an organization prepares and reports its financial information and handles its daily operations is in essence financial practices, and in the way it accomplishes this reveals their ethical standards to which they adhere to. This paper will discuss the financial practices, ethical standards, and
Accountants are held to a higher ethical standards and they must performed their duties in compliance with standards or ethical values of honesty, integrity, objectivity, due care, confidentiality, which must be fully committed to. They must put clients or public interest first before their own. They must have and ethical values and maintain those values way beyond what the society or the company’s code of ethic. It is important that accountants’ behavior or ethical values is in conformity with the
The accounting system is constantly changing. During these changes, it is important for accountants to adhere to the high ethical standards that they have always lived by. Adhering to the high ethical standards is an accountant's obligation to the public, the profession, and themselves. An accountant's ethical conduct usually lies within four different areas. This includes competence, confidentiality, integrity, and objectivity. NYSSCPA.ORG states, "Members also have a continuing responsibility to cooperate with each other to improve the art of accounting, maintain the public's confidence, and carry out the professions special responsibilities for self-governance," (Article 1).
Ethics are crucial to the accounting profession and the business world, so choosing an ethics system to base your moral decisions on is extremely important. Accountants and all business professionals will be confronted with moral dilemmas on a daily basis. Being strong in your faith and knowing what you believe in will help you to always make the right decision. Based on this reasoning, this essay will explain why deontology is the best ethics system for the accounting profession.
Businesses, investors, creditors rely on accounting ethics. The accounting profession requires honesty, consistency with industry standards, and compliance with laws and regulations. The ethics increase the responsibility and integrity of accounting professionals, and public trust. The ethical requirements influence the management behavior and decision-making. The financial scandal of Enron and Arthur Anderson demonstrates the failure of fundamental ethical framework, such as off-balance sheet transactions, misrepresentation of financial statements, inaccurate disclosure, manipulations with earnings, etc. The confronted accounting profession and concern for ethics in businesses forced regulators to revise the conceptual framework of accounting processes.
While I was looking for an appropriate topic for research, I found an interesting publication, which fitted best to the subject (ethics in managerial accounting issues) and also included 5 good examples examples of possible problems associated with the field. The method of the study seemed unclear, especially considering the connection between the serial number of a dollar bill and the question to which the respondent had to answer in the end (in my work I will constantly refer back to the text, and in the end there will be a link to the document for review), though the examples given in the text seem to be really appropriate.
Imagine trusting your hard-earned money like your retirement savings to a financial adviser or Certified Public Accountants (CPA) only to lose it all in a fraudulent Ponzi scheme. In today’s world of business many organizations, financial planners and accountants are in the news due to the financial ethical breaches that have affected their customers, employees, and the general public. A CPA has to be responsible for their audits and take any punishments as a result of their mistakes, incompetence or illegal actions. CPAs are expected to have integrity in their work,
Ethical issues have greatly transformed in our lives since the great Enron, Xerox and other huge corporations proposed big profits showing earnings of billions of dollars and yet in reality facing bankruptcy. These corporations faced great trouble with the federals and state for manipulating financial statements. But not only corporations can be blamed on this, accounting firms were involved in this as much as the corporations were. With the business stand point, ethics comprises of principles and standards that guide behavior. Investors, traders, customers, and legal system determine whether a specific action is ethical or unethical. Ethical issue is a vast subject, but we will look at the niche
When determining and defending the use of a particular ethical system within the confines of a profession, it is important to evaluate the system in terms of the professional culture as well as the expected professional conduct laid out within the vocation itself. The accounting profession has been evolving for thousands of years. Early accounting records date business transactions back as far as third century B.C. (Schroeder, Clark, & Cathey, 2009). Early record keeping was for internal purposes and as societies and economies expanded, it became important to maintain records for external purposes as well. According to Schroeder, Clark & Cathey (2009), by the ninetheeth centruy, bookkeeing expanded into accounting (p. 3). From this time, it has been the duty of the accountant to serve the public interest and the profession has been culitvated into an organizational culture with professional norms and standards constantly taking shape in an effort to complete an all-inclusive conceptual framework.
* Ethical standards: the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants Act 1996 requires that NZICA have a code of ethics that governs the professional conduct of its
Ethics are the backbone of the accounting profession and are a subject of utmost importance within the field of business. Ethics within the accounting profession ensure that financial information is presented truthfully. Accounting ethics deals with specific questions on whether a given business practices is acceptable or not. To this end, many standards, principles and agencies such as FASB, GAAP, IASB, IFRS, and the Securities and Exchange Commission have been formed to codify and enforce these ethics. There has also been an increasing desire within the general public for transparency within publically held firms largely due to recent corporate scandals and the general power large corporations wield over society (Melé,
Many studies demonstrate the differences in financial reporting between the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and U.S. Standards. Nagle, Wasieleski, and Rau (2012) in their research focused on the code of ethics and moral duties of the company top management. The researchers studied the financial scandals and the recent financial crisis to demonstrate the gap between the market processes and accounting standards. The IFRS and U.S. GAAP differ in a contrary nature of accounting standards. GAAP is considered as rule-based standards, while IFRS viewed as a principle-based. Therefore, the professional judgment on financial improprieties is highly important (p. 479). Moreover, the code of ethics and systematic ethics trainings can diminish the inconsistencies from accounting policies (pp. 484-485).