Concept

Accounting ethics

Overview

Accounting ethics is primarily a field of applied ethics and is part of business ethics and human ethics, the study of moral values and judgments as they apply to accountancy. It is an example of professional ethics. Accounting was introduced by Luca Pacioli, and later expanded by government groups, professional organizations, and independent companies. Ethics are taught in accounting courses at higher education institutions as well as by companies training accountants and auditors.

Due to the wide range of accounting services and recent corporate collapses, attention has been drawn to ethical standards accepted within the accounting profession. These collapses have resulted in a widespread disregard for the reputation of the accounting profession. To combat the criticism and prevent fraudulent accounting, various accounting organizations and governments have developed regulations and remedies for improved ethics among the accounting profession.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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1. For example, the law of contradiction states that nothing can both have a certain property and not have it. This is evident as soon as it is understood, but it is not so evident as that a particular rose which we see cannot be both red and not red. (It is of course possible that parts of the rose may be red and parts not red, or that the rose may be of a shade of pink which we hardly know whether to call red or not…

   Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy

   States what Accounting ethics is.

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2. It is customary, however, to include under the term moral knowledge, and even (though improperly) under that of moral science, an inquiry the results of which do not express themselves in the indicative, but in the imperative mood, or in periphrases equivalent to it; what is called the knowledge of duties; practical ethics, or morality. Now, the imperative mood is the characteristic of art, as distinguished from…

   John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive

   States what Accounting ethics is.

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3. To the first correspond what are called individual ends, to the second universal ends; the one gives rise to the judgment concerning the greater or less coherence of the action taken in itself, the other to that concerning its greater or less coherence in respect to the universal end, which transcends the individual.[69] Utilitarianism is according to Croce an attempt to reduce the Ethical to the Economic form…

   John Dewey, Creative Intelligence

   States what Accounting ethics is.

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Related ideas

• The Wall Street Journal
• Corporate governance
• The New York Times
• Value theory
• The Times
• Business ethics
• Wiley (publisher)
• Routledge
• Professional ethics
• Ethics
• Applied ethics
• Texas A&M University
• Accounting

Opposing perspectives

• Outline of ethics

Place in the tradition

Part of Outline of ethics.

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