A Model for the Accounting Ethical Issues

Today, the news is often heard about fraud and misbehavior of management and employees of companies, many of which were expected to be discovered and reported by accountants and auditors. Many accountants and auditors face different ethical challenges daily in their professional affairs. Although the professional code of conducts related to accountants and auditors dealing with ethical issues and challenges has been formulated and communicated, the available evidence shows the failure of these codes and ethical principles. The current research seeks to formulate a model to identify the most critical ethical challenges accountants face and the factors that create them. The grounded theory design has been employed in this study. The results indicate the causal conditions for creating violations and ethical dilemmas in two groups of individual and organizational conditions. Also, ethical challenges are created on the ground of professional societies and social and cultural societies; economic and professional restrictions as intervening conditions lead to accelerating or limiting ethical challenges. In addition, the results show that ethical challenges in the accounting profession include violations that can align with the organization's, public, or individual interests.