Working with Family

When a CPA works with family or someone he has a close relationship to, he puts himself
at risk of a number of ethical dilemmas, such as being too sympathetic to the family
member's problems. These are officially called "familiarity threats" by the American
Institute of CPAs. As an example, assume your brother-in-law is the in-house attorney for
the same company you work for and advises management wrongly on a particular legal
matter. What should you do?
The best solution would be to request anyone with family ties to be moved to a different
department. An additional solution would be to request for an independent peer examination of
any findings submitted to avoid biasness.

Conflict of Interest
A CPA is at risk of having an ethical conflict of interest if she provides audits for a
company whose financial outcome will directly benefit her. This can get a little convoluted.
One example would be a CPA firm that audits a bank's financial statements, but also sells
services for the bank. If the bank has a poor financial statement released to the public, then
the CPA firm might not be able to sell as many services. Assume you work for a firm in this
situation. What should you do?
The most considerable action to take is to remove myself from the auditing team. The two roles
are contradicting and can lead to an unethical outcome of the situation. I would still retain myself
in providing services to the bank but limit my role as an auditor.