Accounting Ethics: A Practical Guide for Professionals.

• Author: Hayes, Arthur A.

Accountants, perhaps more than any other professionals, are expected to be accountable. So, what happens when professional duties come into conflict with moral principles? How are individual accountants to think and act when they face more conflicts? Does the account owe loyalty to the client or to the law - the greater good? For example, should an auditor who realizes during an audit that a client has been underreporting income to the Internal Revenue Service provide that information to the IRS?

For the purposes of this book, the frame of reference for balancing conflicting duties is the accounting profession, with its code of ethics and longstanding commitment to honest reporting. The authors note the skepticism of the public regarding accountants in general and auditors in particular. As an attorney, I also am acutely aware of the stinging criticism leveled by the public who frequently feel both unfairly reliant on the accounting profession and misled or victimized by the persons they must rely upon.

This book provides an overview of ethical theory and then considers the following specific areas: independence, whistle blowing, mentoring, law and ethics (audit failures), conflicting moral duties (seeking loopholes, issues not affecting the financial statements), professional relationships, gender issues and social responsibility accounting. It is not a rule book; it does not provide sure guidelines, for all imaginable events, nor is it a religious work.

The book, a good treatment of some of the more typical ethical dilemmas faced by accountants in today's society, consists of a pinch of theory (a review of the fundamental systems of ethical analysis), mixed with a healthy dose of real-life situations. The two potions are then mixed and the results are studied. Each chapter closes with hypothetical cases illustrating some of the key conflicts discussed in the chapter, complete with questions to assist the reader in applying the systems of ethical analysis to the case.

The strengths of the book are its organization, its enumeration of potential ethical conflicts and its offers of a theoretical framework for considering the conflicts.

The authors, an accounting professor and a "liberal professor of interdisciplinary humanities" also known as an "a ethics," note that accountants, due to the rigors of professional practice including the need to constantly stay breast of new developments and standards, do not have many opportunities to step...