In recent years, critics have alleged that ethical standards of accountants have deteriorated, resulting in "cute accounting" and "cooking the books" by accountants.
Until recently, most efforts to develop ethical standards for accountants have focused on CPAs in the practice of public accounting—primarily auditing. However both the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) and the Financial Executives International (FEI) promulgated standards of ethical conduct for their members in the 1980s.
Despite the AICPA's contention that the primary responsibility for financial statements and financial reporting rests with enterprise management, there has been a long-held view that the first line of defense against improper financial reporting was independent auditors.
An early effort to establish ethical standards for preparers of financial statements was a criticism of the lack of a code of ethics for members of the FEI, by participants in the 1970 Seaview Symposium.
The Equity Funding fraud, discovered in 1973 after a duration of about nine years, involved at least 10 executives of Equity, many of whom were CPAs with public accounting experience.
The Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) Standards of Ethical Conduct for Members cover the management accountant's obligations as to competence, confidentiality, integrity, and objectivity, and provide guidance for resolutions of ethical conflict.
Although briefer than the IMA standards described in paragraph 6, the FEI's Code of Ethics covers essentially the same areas of professional conduct as the IMA standards.
The Treadway Commission made 49 recommendations for curbing fraudulent financial reporting, which is defined as "intentional or misleading conduct, whether act or omission, that results in materially misleading financial statements." The recommendations dealt with public companies; independent public accountants; the SEC, financial institution regulators, and state boards of accountancy; and education. One recommendation was that public companies should maintain accounting functions that are designed to meet their financial reporting obligations.
In 1988, the members of the AICPA approved a revised Code of Professional Conduct, which included several Rules of Professional Conduct that apply to AICPA members not practicing in a CPA firm.
Common requirements of the IMA, FEI, and AICPA ethics pronouncements are for competence, integrity, and objectivity; confidentiality of sensitive information; avoidance of discreditable acts; and avoidance of conflicts of interest. The IMA standards and FEI code specifically require communication of complete information to users of their members' reports; AICPA members indirectly are comparably obligated. Only the AICPA code requires compliance with generally accepted accounting principles.
A conflict of interest results when an individual reaps an inappropriate personal benefit from his or her acts in an official capacity. Insider trading of a publicly owned enterprise's securities is a form of conflict of interest.
Data provided by the Treadway Commission indicate that "cooking the books" episodes do not evidence a wholesale breakdown of ethical conduct by management accountants and financial executives of business enterprises. However, an important question is whether the codes of conduct for management accountants and financial executives recently established or revised by the IMA, the FEI, and the AICPA may help those key players in corporate financial reporting to resist pressures to falsify financial statements and financial reports.
