Enron and Worldcom Case Study

Financial reporting practices and ethics have manifested an ocean of literature. This has mainly come from organization theorists that address accounting practices. These theorists and professionals have given fresh accountability measures. Their ideals give this industry the tools needed to survive, grow and prosper. The way an organization prepares and reports its financial information and handles its daily operations is in essence financial practices, and in the way it accomplishes this reveals their ethical standards to which they adhere to. This paper will discuss the financial practices, ethical standards, and

Accountants are held to a higher ethical standards and they must performed their duties in compliance with standards or ethical values of honesty, integrity, objectivity, due care, confidentiality, which must be fully committed to. They must put clients or public interest first before their own. They must have and ethical values and maintain those values way beyond what the society or the company’s code of ethic. It is important that accountants’ behavior or ethical values is in conformity with the

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, several companies like Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Global Crossing and Tyco, just to name a few, were embroiled in corporate fraud, greed and manipulation. These businesses were intentionally deceiving the public, their investors and even their employees. Company executives were hiding company expenses and liabilities, misreporting company finances in order to increase stock prices. External audit agencies that were hired to examine and certify financial statements for accuracy, were basically

Prior to 2002, financial statement reporting for publically traded companies within the United States was overseen with far less oversight in comparison to current reporting standards and procedures. Appropriate financial reporting is merely one element that was not occurring prior to 2002. An element of corporate dishonesty and deception existed within some the largest publically traded companies and this idea of deceitfulness was perpetuated by the executive staff of the businesses. Enron’s financial disintegration became the facilitator for the need of more rigid financial oversight, but they were not the only company that added to the idea of corporate fraud.

Ethics are crucial to the accounting profession and the business world, so choosing an ethics system to base your moral decisions on is extremely important. Accountants and all business professionals will be confronted with moral dilemmas on a daily basis. Being strong in your faith and knowing what you believe in will help you to always make the right decision. Based on this reasoning, this essay will explain why deontology is the best ethics system for the accounting profession.

Ethics can be defined as a set of values used to judge whether an action is morally right or wrong based on the duty and obligation of an individual (Hess, 2007). Hence, in view of a given task that has to be performed, we are able to judge the performance as being good or wrong based on some moral principles. Hutchings (2010) notes that ethics can be held by an individuals or a groups of people. This paper will be predicated on the thesis that both the utilitarianism and deontological viewpoints have potential to impact the accounting profession and have to be adopted with care.

Enron Corporation was an American energy trading company who committed the largest audit fraud alongside Arthur Andersen and filed for one of the largest bankruptcies in history in 2001 after producing false numbers and committing fraud for years (“Enron’s Questionable Transactions” page 93). Enron failed to run an ethical business in multiple aspects. The executives of the company abused their powers by having board members not properly oversee its employees. Enron committed accounting malpractice by producing false financial reports to hide the debt from failed projects and deals. Using a mark-to-market accounting method, Enron would create assets and claim the projected profit for the books immediately even if the company had not made any profit yet. In order to hide its failures, rather than reporting their loss, they would transfer the loss to an off-the-books account, ultimately leading the loss to go unreported. Along with Enron hiding losses and creating false profit for the

The study is important because it examines the role of ethics in accounting. The research on identified problems is necessary due to vagueness of ethics concepts and its difficulty to

In this paper, I will explain if I believe whether a code of ethics should do more than the establish minimum acceptable standards. I will also describe the 5 cardinal virtues of professional accountings, whether there should be rules-based ethics standards. Lastly, I will compare and contrast the AICPA’s Code of Professional Conduct and the IFAC Code of Ethics for professional accountants.

First, he noted that the field of financial accounting is a very dynamic field and that what is normally taught in class many not reflect what happens in the field. He stresses the fact that the field of financial accounting is very flexible and dynamic and that new norms and codes are often initiated on a constant basis depending on the emerging situations. He gave a number of organizations that have failed despite the fact that there are measures meant to address the issue of financial fraud. He gave an example of a number of companies who have failed despite the fact that there are good accounting principles and good accounting personnel. Homan concluded that financial accountants should always be ready to meet new encounters and respond ethically. In fact Homan spends greater part of its speech in explaining how ethics are crucial in financial accounting or forensic accounting. He emphasizes the fact that ethics are even powerful than the financial theories taught in class. He gave an example of companies where senior management can collude and commit a financial fraud yet they know all the financial principles. In such cases, Homan state that such managers lack the ethical

The accounting professional is an industry in which professionals are commonly faced with hard decisions to act in an ethical manner. According to Enofe, Nakpodia,& Moruku, “Ethical guidelines do not aim to provide instant solutions for all ethical issues, rather, ethical guidelines aim to help in the decision-making process” (2014, p. 144). For the accounting profession, such guidelines and regulations are set forth in the AICPA’s Code of Professional Conduct (code). This code helps to set boundaries for accounting professionals’ interactions with the public, their clients, and also their colleagues (AICPA, 2014, p. 5).

Ethical issues have greatly transformed in our lives since the great Enron, Xerox and other huge corporations proposed big profits showing earnings of billions of dollars and yet in reality facing bankruptcy. These corporations faced great trouble with the federals and state for manipulating financial statements. But not only corporations can be blamed on this, accounting firms were involved in this as much as the corporations were. With the business stand point, ethics comprises of principles and standards that guide behavior. Investors, traders, customers, and legal system determine whether a specific action is ethical or unethical. Ethical issue is a vast subject, but we will look at the niche

Ethical and legal obligations apply to all members of society. As one in society, the obligation to act in an ethical, law abiding manner on a daily basis is vital to the integrity of daily life. Many professions have their own code of ethics. Financial reporting is not exempt from such ethical and legal standards. One’s lively hood depends on decisions made in the business world. Business transactions are done daily and can impact one’s economic stability. Trust is placed in the hands of corporate America and an obligation of financial reporting to reveal a complete honest and legal picture of an entity’s accounting practices is important in attaining trust. This paper will discuss the obligations of

Even the small profits reported by Enron in 2000 were eventually determined to be only a illusion by court-appointed bankruptcy examiner Neal Batson. Batson’s report reveals that over 95% of the reported profits in these two years were attributed to Enron’s misuse of MTM and other accounting techniques. But while financial analysts could not be expected to know that the company illegally manipulated the earnings, the reported profit margins in 2000 were so low and were declining so steadily that they should have merited ample skepticism from analysts about the company’s profits.

Most of the world has heard of Enron, the American, mega-energy company that “cooked their books” ( ) and cost their investors billions of dollars in lost earnings and retirement funds. While much of the controversy surrounding the Enron scandal focused on the losses of investors, unethical practices of executives and questionable accounting tactics, there were many others within close proximity to the turmoil. It begs the question- who was really at fault and what has been done to prevent it from happening again?