Unethical practices and behavior in accounting Essay

Unethical practices and behavior in accounting - Essay Example Unethical practices and behavior in accounting Diversified forces, from professions’ external environments, regulate professional practices. In this paper, analyze Beth’s article, ‘Eight years after fact is SOX working? A look at the Brook corporation’, with the aim of identifying situations that may lead to unethical practices and behavior and review effects of Sarbanes-Oxley Act on financial statements. Situations that might lead to unethical practices and behavior in accounting People’s practices and behavior are largely influenced by their environments that can either encourage good practices and behavior or can allow for, and even promote immoral acts among accountants. Opportunities are one of the set of situations that might lead to unethical practices and behavior. Ethics are moral rules and therefore restrain people into conformance to expected practices. It relies on both the level at which such people can be influenced or coerced to acculturate such standards and the effectiveness in p reventing possibilities of unethical practices. Availability of opportunities for unethical practice however challenges these factors because of the involved social aspects of ethics. An individual, based on the possible gain from a practice, may for example choose to utilize an opportunity into unethical practice or behavior for such gains. Opportunities also offer temptation into unethical practices and behavior and may influence an individual to behave unethically against an individual’s intentions (Beth, 2010). Bad ethical examples set by others forms another situation that is likely to lead to unethical practice or behavior in the accounting profession and is majorly influenced by the role and impacts of leadership concepts. ... Environment plays a significant role in influencing a person’s behavior and an environment where unethical practices exist will influence a person into such practices. This influence is particularly effective when senior people in an organization do the undesirable behaviors and practices. While junior employees may not have the authority to stop the practices, frustrations that their seniors are benefiting at their expense are likely to influence them into unethical practices. Bad example set by senior people in an organization also spread to lower levels of the organization’s structure because such leaders lose their moral power and the conscience to condemn unethical practices. Persistent misrepresentation of financial information by an organization’s chief accountant for example sets a bad example to junior accounts officers who may emulate their senior’s behavior (Beth, 2010). Lack of incentives is another situation that may lead to unethical practice s and behavior in accounting. This applies from two perspectives, lack of incentives to facilitate ethical practice, and lack of general employee incentives towards utility and commitment to a workplace. There are avenues to acculturating ethics among people such as training them on the need for ethical practice, creating awareness on possible consequences of unethical practice, and establishing a culture that values ethics. Lack of these factors in an organization may facilitate unethical acts because people will lack knowledge on significance of ethics. General work incentives such as rewards and remunerations, trainings and other offers that promote employee utility at the workplace are also significant to