Accounting ethics is one of the leading areas of applied ethics, which refers to the study of the moral values as well as decisions as they relate to the accountancy profession. Therefore, it is a perfect example of professional ethics. It was first established and used by Luca Pacioli, and after that the idea was expanded by the federal government sects, professional institutions, as well as sovereign organizations. It can be taught by the higher education institution and even the first training accountants as well as auditors. The nature of the work done by the accountants as well as the auditors needs one to uphold higher levels of ethics ( Ghahramani, 2015) . Shareholders, probable shareholders, and any other groups of people using the financial statements rely on their accuracy of the information or data presented in the financial statements to make wise decisions of whether they should invest more or pull out of the firm. Therefore, if the accountants, as well as auditors, manipulate the information, they will be making other people to suffer as they will make poor decisions that may, in turn, result in them making massive losses from their investment into the firm.
The unethical practice of data manipulation is one that should be fought by all means by every individual in the firm. This is usually done by the accountant as a result of the pressure from the top managers in the organization so that they can evade taxation or get taxed on a smaller amount of income than what they get in reality. This helps the firm to hide their failures, and thus they continue to run their business without the name of their firm being destroyed by the media posting the information to the public. Despite the fact that the act seems to be very helpful, it causes a large number of harm than the good it brings to the organization. For instance, in doing that they get taxed lowly implying that the government will get low revenues from the firm which it could have used to improve other sectors of the economy. Moreover, the act makes the wrongdoers in the firm such as managers who steal the funds from the organization can avoid being caught by persuading or forcing the accountants to manipulate the data for them. Moreover, the false information when presented to the users such as the stakeholders and the investors it always misguides them into making wrong decisions that the end up regretting after realizing the truth. In dealing with such unethical practices in accounting, the firm should promote a culture that does not encourage the accountants to be involved in such misconducts.
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The accountant or can also get involved in bribe taking so as that he or she can deliver some manipulate work to the boards in an attempt to save a person from getting fired or imprisoned. The act is unprofessional and unethical. This is because by doing this another person will get penalized for a mistake that he or she did not commit as the manipulated data may mislead the evaluators into pointing the finger at the wrong person. It is unethical to help another person walk away from justice and let another person suffer for mistakes that he or she did not commit ( Burns, 2015) . Such ethical issues have forced the government to create regulations as well as remedies for enhancing ethics in the accounting professions, which will, in turn, help in dealing with the criticism as well as fraudulent accounting in a various organization. The firm should also launch programs to enlighten the people about the adverse effects of unethical behaviors being practiced in accounting. This will help the professionals in understanding the importance of upholding a high level of ethics in the workplace.
The main problem in handling accounting ethics is that professionals in this field are always forced to consider the interest of the users or public, which highly depends on the data collected in various auditions while making sure that they do not get fired by the firms they are doing the audit. They must check on the best way to apply the accounting standards even in cases where they are faced with problems that could result in the firm making massive losses or even shut down ( Gong, 2017) . The duty of an accountant is of great help in the community. They act as the financial communicators as well as intermediaries in the commerce market and owe their primary duty to the interest of the masses. The data they give is fundamental as it assists the managers, entrepreneurs, and many other uses to make substantial economic decisions that will make them to either get profit or losses from their ventures. Thus, any unethical behaviors from the accountant will directly result in adverse impacts to the community, which in turn, will lead the losing public trust in their work and also in the destruction of a productive capital market activity. The use of ethics rules has been known to deter accounting as well as auditing organizations from advertising their information directly to the clients. This is because by permitting the firms to advertise, the commercial side most of the time overstepped the professional part of the profession resulting in a conflict of interest among the teams involved in the transaction. Accounting business has been commercialized as seen by the way they are losing interest in lower paying audits and emphasis on higher income ventures such as consultation. This has increased the number of unethical practices in the sector.
References
Gong, J. J. (2017). Ethics in Accounting: A Decision-Making Approach.
Burns, D. J., Tackett, J. A., & Wolf, F. (2015). The effectiveness of instruction in accounting ethics education: Another look. In Research on Professional Responsibility and Ethics in Accounting (pp. 149-180). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Ghahramani, B., Soleymanpor, M., & Fatahi, R. (2016). Ethics in accounting and auditing. IIOAB Journal , 7 , 293-299.
