Accounting Ethics

Accountants are required to follow several codes of ethics in order to perform their duties in an independent, expert and targeted format. The main objective of the accountants is to certify the data in the financial statements. Organizational structure, incentives and ethics are strictly tied to each other. Establishing moral principles and ethical training programs in an organization will result in enhancing the quality, credit and reputation of a firm and increasing stock price. In the present environment, companies are under pressure to follow ethical codes in order to supply qualified and reliable productions to the market. Accounting and auditing companies are not exceptions and their services should be of high quality. There is a question about the degree to which the accountants follow the principles of accounting ethics. According to this study, economics deals with three main principles of traditional ethical topics. Different types of ethics and ethical development model of Kolberg are developed in this study. Finally, the ethical scandals in accounting are presented. It is further discussed whether accounting or commerce is responsible of the scandals.