Ethics in Accounting

Introduction

There has been an increasing call for the consideration of ethics as part of accounting education programme and management globally in recent years. Many professional bodies are requiring ethics coverage. We regularly see calls for more ethical behavior in business in the media. Businesses need to clean up its act, including the phases and concepts as concern for environment, concern for employees, stakeholder interest, and the need for people to take a position. The study of ethics does not provides a list of things which are right or which are wrong, rather it provide a framework for understanding and analysing the impact of a decision from an ethical perspective. Ethics and the law may be distinguished as legal behavior may not be considered as ethical. A regularly ethical problem faced by accountants are the choices of valuation techniques, changes in accounting standards, or alternative treatment in audit and financial reporting can lead to vary reporting outcomes and it can alter the readership and hence the accountants are exploiting professional choice and flexibility to present a particular picture with the objective to change the way a reader think. This is no longer the objective an accountant going about their activity but a deliberate act of manipulation for the purpose of manipulating other’s opinion. This is obviously an ethical element which should be explored. In this assignment, our group is going to study about what’s ethics got to do with accounting?

Definition and importance of ethics

Individual action is being observed and evaluated by other as positive or negative action in every profession (Mohamad, et al., 2011). According to Needles and Powers (2011), ethics is “a code of conduct that appli...

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