Ethical Issues and Values in Accounting Essay

Accounting is a profession that many people find to be a hard nut to crack. But it remains to be one subject that surrounds
everyone on a daily basis. Individuals who are not qualified accountants still find themselves calculating many things that
involve money. Professional accountants may be few, but accounting concerns everything. It is also good to consider ethical
requirements. Every accountant and accounting institution should adapt to new regulations. This paper will discuss these
accounting values.

Ethics stands for right or wrong that is acceptable to an individual or a group of people. It is a group of principles governing
morality and acceptable conduct (Sorensen, Miller & Cabe, 2015). It is a requirement of the military profession and health
profession to practice high ethical standards. Ethics is about giving courteous service and support to both deserving and
undeserving citizens.

For many years, the accounting profession did not consider ethics as an essential part of the job (Unerman, Bebbington &
O’Dwyer, 2007). Most higher learning institutions concentrated on the hard facts of calculating and dealing with financials. It
was up to the educated to know what, when and how to do accounting. As a result, the students and the graduates did not
understand the basics of involving ethics in their work.

A restatement is a revised statement. The incidences of restatements have brought forth the fear that all is not well in the
accounting profession. They serve as the proxy for fraud (Sorensen et al., 2015). Organizations should refrain from this practice
at all costs. The Bentley University released a shocking report in 2014. It highlighted the fraudulent deals of a leading professor.
Other reports also recalled the misgivings of midsized companies. The totals and accelerated filers continued to increase
(Abdolmohammadi and Ariail 5).

Some companies have the practice of promoting the unethical behaviors of misreporting their financial status. They have for
some reason used their records to evade paying taxes. Others want to record false income so that they can please the
shareholders and pay dividends from income that does not exist (Unerman et al., 2007). The reports from the 1990s to the early
2000s indicated that there was a slight decline in misreporting of financial statements. The decline resulted from intense media
campaigns against the practice of unethical reporting. Some of these institutions never even feared the consequences of their
actions. They had loopholes in the law that allowed them the chance to cheat.

Employees of these companies also fear reporting the bad behaviors of their managers and other superiors. They thought that
they could protect their employment by staying quiet. Some even assisted their seniors to doctor reports and made them look
real. Some of these problems start in schools. Students cheat to get false results in their exams to project false results. The
professors have on several occasions assisted such students to get away with it.

The case of Jennifer is not strange when compared to other institutions. Here is a lady who has only four years of experience
and wants to build a career (Clikeman, 2009). She finds a job with a company dealing with auditing. One would expect such a
company to be morally fit because it is working on other companies’ reports. Instead, the president of the business is the one
promoting malpractice in the organization.

Jennifer is now stranded on what to do because she wants to be truthful. She also wants to instill her knowledge of accounting
and good practice in making financial reports. Jennifer also has got a long way to go concerning her career (Jeffrey, 2012). She
reflected on whether to press on with her idea of providing the correct report or the plan or become compromised and redraft
her report. Such is the case many employees face (Abdolmohammadi and Ariail 5).

However, all is not lost. Many people have had to rethink the well-being of their accounting careers. Many academic thinkers
and scholars have made it possible by introducing the subject of ethics in the accounting classes (Jeffrey, 2012). The
curriculum would also include corporate social responsibility and sustainability. Some states in the United States of America
have already passed that as law and are practicing it. The remaining ones are either working on it or are at the final stages of
implementing it (Clikeman, 2009).
The law would also allow the already qualified graduates in accounting to retrain and study the ethics subject. There is also a
chance for others who can participate in the shared knowledge through training workshops inside and out of school (Healy-
Burress, 2011). Some companies have taken up the issue to train their workers at the place of work.

When it comes to teaching ethics, accounting has similar attributes to medical and legal professions. The applications for
ranking the medical and juridical profession together with the accounting profession do not match well. The Defining Issue Test
is a principles based test and typically gives the nurses a higher score than the accountants. It is because the nurses can
improvise their services quickly to their patients. Most of the nurse’s findings deal with issues they can relate to easily. On the
other hand, accounting deals with rules and already formulated procedures. Therefore, the trainers have to take a more formal
approach when dealing with the accountants.

References
Abdolmohammadi, M., & Ariail, D. (2009). A Test of the selection-socialization theory in moral reasoning of CPAs in industry
practice. Behavioral Research in Accounting, 21(2), 1-12.

Clikeman, P. (2009). Called to account. New York, NY: Routledge.

Healy-Burress, J. (2011). Ethics regulation by the accounting profession. Journal of Business & Economics Research (JBER),
2(9), 112-115.

Jeffrey, C. (2012). Research on professional responsibility and ethics in accounting. Bingley, United Kingdom: Emerald.

Sorensen, D., Miller, S., & Cabe, K. (2015). Developing and measuring the impact of an accounting ethics course that is based on
the moral philosophy of Adam Smith. J Bus Ethics, 3(15), 300-320.

Unerman, J., Bebbington, J., & O’Dwyer, B. (2007). Sustainability accounting and accountability. London, United Kingdom:
Routledge.