Unethical Behavior Essays

Unethical Behavior Essays Unethical Behavior Essay Unethical Behavior Essay Impacts of Unethical Behavior Unethical actions can affect millions of individuals creating hardship in personal lives. The Enron case directly created this action. The accountants are given the duty of figuring and providing information of a company’s financial standing. This information provides investors an important resource in making the decision of investing in a company, or not investing in a company. The plague of greed, poor decisions, and unethical behavior flourishes at times through a company. This plague can potentially affect millions of serious investors. This is the root of the Enron case. The old saying, one small lie creates a bigger lie, was the beginning of Enron’s downfall. People of authority made the decision to lie on the on the income statement which over time this small lie turned out to be a multi-billion dollar crumble. Billions of dollars of investors money was taken as the company fell to nothing. In this case Authur Anderson was a key contributor to the endless unethical behavior and lies that flourished in this case. This person was in charge of the auditing and lied about the untruthful information regarding the income and equity value. Adding on to that, Enron eventually released that they were involved in numerous partnerships which were only created to hide the debt and trading losses. There were internal sources that did try to warn investors about the unethical accounting practices but nobody really listened or comprehended the warning. This lack of comprehension and possible communication crushed the company’s foundation and millions of investors lost their financial investment. I believe I would have noticed an error like this, or at least noticed it before it reach the level it did of billions. I would have informed the authority of the company and continued up the chain of command until action was taken. This type of action may cost me my job, but it would have saved thousands of other jobs. This outlandish, unethical, unacceptable behavior flourished a plague of billions of dollars lost, and created thousands of jobs to come to an end. Regulatory Bodies The Internal Revenue Service, or IRS is probably one of the most well known regulatory body. The main purpose of this body is to impose and manage the internal revenue law. The IRS is responsible for tax collection. Another regulatory body is Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC. This regulatory body requires companies to follow the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and also watch security. The Financial Accounting Foundation, or FAF, is in charge of a few boards and councils such as the government accounting standards advisory council, the administration and finances of the financial accounting standards board, the financial accounting standards advisory council, and the governmental accounting standards board. The Financial Accounting Standard Board, or FASM deals with the standards of non-governmental financial reporting and accounting. The Governmental Accounting Standards Board generates GAAP for both local and state government. Another regulatory body is the federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board, or FASAB which was created to spread federal accounting standards after consideration of the budgetary and financial information needs of congressional groups, federal financial information users, citizens, and executive agencies. The International Accounting Standards Board, or IASB was developed to create standards of accounting by an international consultation process. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, or PCAOB was developed through the creation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to protect investors and their investments. The protection is from auditors of public traded companies. Last but not least is the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, or ACIPA which functions to create the reporting standards along with financial accounting standards.