Accounting responsibility in economic crisis. Ethical issues
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14422/icade.i91.y2014.005Keywords:
Accounting Ethics, Accounting Education, Business Ethics, Accounting Scandals, Creative Accounting, Economic CrisisAbstract
Accounting information has an extraordinary importance for the companies’ good performance and the running of the economic system as a whole. This is the reason why its practice is restricted and allowed only to professionals. Accounting professionals are people technically qualified, but also obliged by a strict deontological code and devoted to public service. If this accounting profession’s ethical component is forgotten, or its goal of public service undervalued, a kind of damaging “creative accounting” arises with very negative effects both for companies and for the entire economic system. In this paper the scientific nature of accounting is analized, as well as its public utility and its key ethical issues. In addition, the responsibility for the bad use of this science in the financial scandals and the big economic crisis of the beginningof this century is reviewed.References
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