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Certified Public Accountants Professional Ethics

Posted on:2004-03-15Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:Z K XuFull Text:PDF
GTID:2206360092485239Subject:Accounting
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
The end of year 2001 had witnessed panic of the whole world. The Enron's bankruptcy had brought damage to the wealth of the investors. In this event, Arthur Anderson for sure had to take undeniable responsibility. As for domestic auditors,their auditing quality is also frustrating.The reason for the happening of these events lies largely on the ignorance of the professional ethics of certified public accountants. As for this, this paper will begin from the professional ethics and the code of professional ethics to find out the underlying reason that causes the ignorance, so as to search for some solutions for the construction of professional ethics of CPA.The paper is divided into four parts: the first part is to describe the importance of professional ethics of CPA; the second part is to make an economic analysis and international comparison of the code of professional ethics; then, the third part is set on to analyze the current situation of the professional ethics in China, in several aspects such as policy, economics, law, and culture; the last part is trying to give some suggestions to the construction of professional ethics. The first part is about the importance of CPA professional ethics: first, several concepts have to be defined, for instance, ethics, professional ethics, integrity, and law. Here in this paper, the concept of integrity just equals the concept of professional ethics, for the author thinks, integrity means not only the personality of a person, but also the ability to fulfill his commitment. That is the same meaning of professional ethics. And then goes the illustration of the importance of professional ethics. Due to the existence of accountability, the CPA industry came into being. So CPAs must be responsible for the public. If they don't abide by the professional ethics, then the public interest will behurt.The second part of the article is to make an economic analysis and international comparison of the code of CPA professional ethics. Because of the importance of the professional ethics, there must be a standard to restrict it, and that is the code of CPA professional ethics. Actually, it is a contract about the service quality of CPA in the CPA service market, which reaches agreement on the mutual behavior of CPA and interest-related parties. After the long-time development of CPA service market, the codes of professional ethics have been generally accepted and standardized, and become independent from the various transaction contracts. Now they are issued by CPA professional society, and have general restriction to all the professionals, as a public contract. The public contract actually is signed between the CPA professionals and the public, so as to avoid the time-and-energy wasting of public. And the public can participate by some other means, for example, through lawsuit and calling on the strengthened governance of the CPA industry.Then there goes the comparison of structures and principles of the codes among several professional organizations. And we draw a conclusion: the structure of the code for CPA conduct of China is the shabbiest one. We have to do some reform on it. We need to divide it into three categories: principles, rules and rules explanations. As for the principles, we think it should be as follows: public interest, responsibility, integrity, and objectivity.The third part is to analyze the current situation of CPA professional ethics through the aspects of policy, economics, law, and culture. And so we know, to a large extent, they are influenced by the harsh environment they are in. Factors such as the changing policy, the imperfect legislature, the disagreement between the traditional culture and the marketing economy, and the lack of both needs and supplies of high quality of auditing services determine that CPAs really don't have the motive tokeep their integrity.The forth part tries to give some suggestions to the construction of professional ethics. Our opinion is, to build the CPA's professional ethics, we can s...
Keywords/Search Tags:Professional ethics, Code of professional ethics, Principle oriented, Law enforcement
PDF Full Text Request
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