Unethical Behavior of Financial Accounting

Accounting can be best described as a type of tool or language put in place in order to provide appropriate information with regards to the financial position of an organization, corporate or business. With this kind of information, it will always be critical to investors as it provides them with relevant and thorough information that could turn out to be the deciding factor whether to invest or not to invest in a particular organization. Hence, it is very common to find unethical behavior in accounting practices in many different forms.

Variety of situations that might lead to unethical practices in accounting include: • Misleading financial analysis in order to obtain personal gains

• Misuse of funds (Liquidity)
• Exaggerating revenue
• Purposely providing erroneous information in regards to expenses
• Exaggerating the value of corporate assets
• Purposely providing erroneous information in regards to liabilities
• Securities fraud
• Bribery
•Financial Market Manipulation (Setting off a trend that will increase/decrease stock values).
• Inside trading

The two examples of unethical practices in accounting are those of the 2002 Enron / Andersen and the WorldCom scandal.

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Both of these companies were involved in unethical accounting practices. While Enron was accused of a vast number of shady dealings that included concealing debts in order keep them from being reflected on the company’s accounts, WorldCom’s accounting practices were so fraudulent that the company was led into the largest bankruptcy in history.

Unethical accounting practices and scandals of the caliber of the Enron / Andersen and the WorldCom scandals is what led the U.

S. government to get involved and at the same time contributed to the government’s creation of the Sarbanes – Oxley Act of 2002. The Sarbanes – Oxley Act was created by the government with the intention to bring to an end unethical behavior by implementing strict auditing rules in accounting. However, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 addresses problems in the private sector; it does not address

REFERENCES:

Retrieved from (2008, 08). Unethical Behavior in Accounting. StudyMode.com. Retrieved 08, 2008, from http://www.studymode.com/essays/Unethical-Behavior-Accounting-159154.html