Ethics In Accounting

Samantha Johnston ACCT 1010 February 17, 2019 Ethics in Financial Accounting Ethics are a very important factor when making a decision. Ethics are the code of rules that a person lives by. They can be developed by many different factors. Family interaction is one of the biggest environments that people develop a code of ethics. The people you live with when you are growing up and learning, influence you so much. For example, if a mother repeatedly steals a candy for you from the store, the child is going to see that it is okay to steal candy and in turn, start to steal candy. In the other direction, if a child tries to steal a candy and their mother tells them that stealing is not okay, the child learns that stealing is and they won’t do it. Religion is also a very important factor to the development of ethics. In most religions, there is already set rules or commandments that the members are supposed to live by. This is important for a lot of people when they make decisions because they want to do good in the sight of their church. However, some people may not believe in all of the rules and they will develop a unique set of ethics that are personal to them. For example, a christian woman might think that it is okay to get wildly drunk because her past religion allowed that, while others in her new religion believe it is okay to drink in moderation and under control. Where someone grows up can affect their ethics. A person may believe certain things in one environment because that is what is constantly shown to them or they could believe the total

opposite in another environment. For example, someone who lived in the south during slavery believed having slaves was perfectly okay because that is what all of the neighbors were doing too, while if that person was raised in a non-slave state, they would have believed that slavery was horrible. These ethics or rules that we develop from observing and experiencing help us make decisions. They tell us what we believe to be right or wrong. When we are faced with a big decision, we reflect on past consequences and will choose an option based on the outcome we will get out of it. Steve needs to buy food for his family, but he does have enough money to get everything the family needs. The store owner is very oblivious and would not notice if a few things had been taken without being paid for. Some of the consequences for stealing would include, feeling guilty and possibly getting caught or he could get away with it and have food for his family. Steve could also ask the owner for a discount because he does not have enough money. This option seems like the best one, but the owner might not let him get everything he needs at such a low price. This decision can influence Steve’s ethics because whatever he chooses to do and what the outcome of that choice is will influence him to either make the choice again or pick the other option next time. Personal ethics are a big part of an organization’s ethics. The company is made of people, so it is obvious that the people’s ethics need to be in line with the company. When doing the accounting in a company, it is up to the people doing the work to be honest and do things in an ethical way. If workers did not develop the same type of ethics as the company, they may do things that are not in accordance to company standards and will embarrass the company or get

them into big trouble. It is important to companies to hire employees they know will follow the same set of ethics. In the future something like this may arise: I am an accountant and my boss tells me that our numbers are not good this quarter. They want me to manipulate the numbers to make them appealing to the investors and stockholders, so we don’t take a huge loss. If I don’t do this, I will get fired. I have a family at home to feed and really need this job to support them. So what do I do? I would quit the job. Commiting fraud would hurt my reputation more than losing my job. It would be so much better for me to get out of that company and find a new job. Ethics are huge in the workplace and you need to be careful who you choose to work for, making sure that what you believe is what the company supports too.