Ethical Issues in Finance and Accounting

The accountants are the main contributors in ethical standards of a business. The financial scandals raised in the recent times were characteristics of deeper problems and identified that improvement of ethical standards, adequacy of financial management, reporting mechanisms, audit quality and strengthening of governance regimes as means to improve public confidence in financial reporting. The ethics of a business is currently a most important issue owing to sensational corporate scandals that had taken place in many countries which are damaging to the economy and society. These corporate scandals question the morality of businessmen in general and accountants in particular. The accounting profession has a responsibility towards these areas, whose deficiencies have led to corporate scandals and collapses. Hence, today, ethical conduct of accounting and finance has become a typical issue. In this context, this paper focuses on the following aspects: the concept of ethics, various ethical issues in accounting and finance, and steps to prevent those issues.