Homework Question on Ethical Issues In the Accounting Profession
- In this report you will select a current topic in accounting ethics and provide a report. Accounting relies heavily on estimations and judgment calls. This leads to situations where two ethical people can sharply disagree on how to approach an ethical dilemma.
- Your report will identify an accounting topic or rule that is currently being debated, describe the issue, identify the relevant stakeholders, and provide your recommendations and rationale for those recommendations.
- Your report should be 2-4 pages in length. Industry publications and the American Institute for Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) are good places to search for topics for your report.
Homework Answer on Ethical Issues In the Accounting Profession
Introduction
An accountant in any organization has the responsibility of ensuring that he or she remains loyal and impartial to ethical guidelines especially in situations where the said accountant is reviewing an organization’s or an individual’s financial records or the purposes of providing a financial report (Duska et al, 2011). It is important to note that irrespective of the type of organization, an accountant encounters ethical issues and he or she must remain in the reduction o the possibilities of outside forces manipulating financial records which could result n a combination of both ethical and criminal contraventions (Guney & Bozkurt, 2012).
Pressure from the management
The urge among public organizations to ensure high level success often places undue stress and pressure on the accountant in the process of creating financial records such as balance sheet and financial statements. (Usurelu et al, 2010). The ethical dilemma in such cases is often to ensure consistency and honesty while reporting of an organization’s assets, liabilities and profit margins without giving to the pressure from the management.
Accountants as whistleblowers
Ethical dilemmas among accountants involve reporting existing accounting violations to the boards concerned. Ethically it is the responsibility of an accountant to report any form of malpractice in accounting matters (Ferrell et al, 2010). However, the ramifications of reporting such as bad press resulting from an accounting scandal. In addition, the fear of rapid decline of an organization and the eventual layoff of numerous employees may also restrain accountants from reporting financial malpractice (Guney & Bozkurt, 2012).