On Accounting Ethics

As the sweeping of the world financial crisis, as well as the frequent occurrence of some uncontrolled phenomena in the development of market economy, such problems as the accounting information distortion and the loss of basic accounting ethical principles, which exposed in the complex financial relationship of the economy world, make the accounting ethics becoming the focus of educational circles and the whole society increasingly.This paper investigates systematically the socialism accounting ethics issues in our country, taking such human nature theories of economic man and moral man as the logical starting point, combining with the theories of ethics,economics and management, using a combination of theory and practice, adopting the means of analysis and description, standing on the local and global perspective.The paper analyses the performances and causes of ethical issues in our accounting field. On the basis of the historical analysis of experiences about treatments to accounting ethical issues both home and abroad, the paper builds the theoretical framework of treatments to accounting ethical issues at macro level, and further approaches the subject of treatments to accounting ethical issues from the micro angles, the angle of the control of accounting moral hazard, the angle of the choice of accounting ethical behavior, the angle of the exploration of accounting ethical education and the angle of the construction of accounting ethical system, in order to provide the decision-making references and the basis of choice to the treatments to the ethical issues in our country, which has a theoretical innovation and practical significance. This paper is divided into seven chapters:The first chapter is an introduction, which discusses the background and significance of accounting ethical.The second chapter discusses the theoretical basis of accounting ethics. And this topic holds the idea that the accounting man is the unism of economic man and moral man and the building of accounting man is a basic project of socialism marketing economic construction. The essence of accounting is human activity, reflecting the relationship between humans. From ethics, accounting is an ethic activity, is a special gather of moral phenomenon, moral standard and moral activity essentially. All the human activities involve ethics. As a human activity, accounting also has its ethical aspect. Accounting and ethics go hand in hand. From economics, accounting ethics is a property system. The foundation, implementing and revise of accounting ethics's the property system is expensive undertaking. Accounting ethics is economic system. When framing accounting ethics, we must seriously consider that if we frames or revises the accounting ethics, whether it promotes the growth of economy or hinders the growth and whether its meaning is positive or passive. Accounting ethics is also an effective information mechanism. The information nonsymmetry leads to the appearance of adverse selection issues and moral hazards issues. Accounting ethical standard is the outcome of repeated game between stakeholders. From game theory, only after game playing many times, fair, equitable and public can really reach, consequently the ideal state of Nash equilibrium can reach.The third chapter reviews the ethical issues in the field of accounting and its causes. In reality the phenomenon of moral hazard in the field of accounting in our country becomes increasingly intense. From the idea aspect, ultra-individualism has been dangerously into Chinese society. And inevitably accounting field cannot escape from it. Hedonism, money worship and selfish departmentalism has reach a pitch. On the normalization level, accounting personnels lack the professional ethics, the principles of independence, objectiveness and fairness are broken, accounting professional ethics are breached and the phenomenon of arrogation is very prominent. On the behavioral level, ethical activities are misconducted, inadequate, worse and worst behaviors in accounting field are getting a better signal. Some accounting personnel lose their mind, begining with anomie actions and ending with infringement of the law. The four kinds of interreaction between distortion about human nature and the lure of lucre, lack of system and inadequate supervision, low cost and poor execution, weak education and historical influence, draw a heavy, immoral picture about accounting ethical issues. On the surface, the generation of various accounting ethical issues has been caused by unpleasant social economic circumstances, imperfect legislation, relaxed enforcement, minor penalties. All this cannot restrict people's various kinds of ill acts. Fundamentally the reason is that people's ethical standards are slipping, the boundaries between true and false, good and evil, beauty and ugliness, loyalty and shyster are obscure, they cannot restrict people's ill soul, thus the immoral phenomenon and activities appear in accounting field.Chapter IV summarizes the historical choice of the accounting ethical issues treatment and puts forward a new theoretical framework of accounting ethics treatment. This chapter is the focus of the full text. The legislation and punishment of accounting officials crime, the generation and developing of accounting ethical thought, the practice and keeping of accounting moral rules are the prominent features of accounting ethics construction in our ancient times, and are also the precious experiences of accounting ethics construction we can borrow. Looking at the West's treatment to accounting ethical issues, we can find that it is an evolving process of accounting legal institution's perfection, accounting institution's innovation and accounting ethics'progress. When going through painful lessons brought by accounting moral crisis, the West has been continuously exploring the way to treat it at the same time. From the promulgation of accounting norms to the implement of accounting legal institutions, from reinforcing supervision to paying attention to moral education, we see the all kinds of efforts made by western countries to treat the accounting crisis and rebuild the confidence of investors. In fact, the treatment to accounting ethical issues can not rely on a single approach and it requires comprehensive treatment. It must depend on the power of reasonable legal institutions, but it can not lie to the power overly. We can not worship the power of marketing excessively, the private self-regulation is not certin of the best choice. We cannot pay attention to the arrangement of institutions too seriouly to neglect the full-range moral education. The complexity of accounting ethical issues'causes in our country and the diversity of existence forms determine that the treatment to accounting ethical issues is a systems engineering. So we must emphasize the fundamental solutions, preventive measures and institutional improvement. From the macro perspective view of social ethics, the basic framework of accounting ethical issues'treatment must emphasize containment from the source, strengthen education, perfect system, deepen the reform and impel them step by step. To be specific, it must be built from many ways, like the layering of accounting ethical norms, the legislation of accounting ethical norms, the institutionalization of accounting ethical activities, the specialization of accounting ethics education, the socialization of accounting ethics supervision and so on.Chapter V discusses the construction of the accounting institution ethics. The construction of accounting ethics is a systematic project, The urgent need is the construction of accounting institution ethics. The innovation of accounting institution ethics includes two aspects, systematic ethics and the institutionalization of ethics. The institution design ethics has consideration to ethics when designing and building institution. It includes the ethical basis of institution foundation and also includes rationality of ethics. The institution operation ethics is the ethical norms which should be followed when the institution is operating and realized. The institutionalization of accounting ethics is a systematic normal power, which combines the authority mechanism backed by force power and articulation, external institutional of moral conscience. The institutionalization, normalization, articulation, legislation of accounting ethics is the demand of. society development. The institutionalization of accounting ethics is the inevitable choice under the special economic system nowadays.Chapter VI analyses profoundly the control of accounting ethical risk and accounting moral choice. From the perspective of accounting crisis governing, the control of accounting ethical risk is the high-level tactics of accounting industry self-regulation and internal control. The administration of accounting moral risk includes identification of moral risk, motive analysis of moral risk, countermeasure of moral risk and so on. As a member of cociety, each accounting practitioner has the mission and responsibility of choice. To abandon this mission or responsibility is to give up the entitlement as humans and bring himself down to the level of animal. Factors that affect the choice of accounting practices include social moral system, accounting moral system and accounting profession moral education. Psychological mechanisms of accounting moral choice is the mental structure and mental basis for accounting moral choice processing and acting. It is a self-conscious, independent, and self-control link-way or run-way. The implements of accounting moral choice is on the basis of a certain freedom, according to the right size of choice, the process of choosing the right way to reach the goal of choice and undertake corresponding moral responsibility. The premise, size, ends and means of choice are the three important segment of concrete implementation of accounting moral choice.Chapterâ…¦explores the moral education of accounting. From the perspective of accounting ethical, the moral education of accounting is the most basic in the theoretical framework of accounting treatment, but it is also the most weak and tend to be neglected by people. We should update our mind and be creative in accounting ethics education systerm, sector, content and methods, then the accounting ethics education can be put into great play. Meanwhile, in order to strengthen the moral construction of accounting, and prevent and control the problem of moral hazard, we should be people-oriented, and based on the principal accounting practitioners, and try to cultivate their moral conscience. The accounting conscience of an enterprise and the professional conscience of the accountants consists the dual structure of accounting conscience. According to this dual structure, we can cultivate and build accounting conscience from two aspects. From the point of the purpose of accounting ethics education, other-discipline moral education and self-discipline moral education are both important measures to build noble accounting moral character. Complemented other-discipline with self-discipline to work together. There are three levels of accounting moral realm:"employment", "duty", anc "dedication". Uniting people with education, motivating people with culture, and only by a variety of effective accounting moral education, can the belief of " honesty, personal integrity, guidelines and no false account" filter into people's minds.