Ethics Research Essays

During my courses, I frequently remind students that most corporate executives, accountants, and auditors are honest and ethical. This case provides a stark and powerful example of one such individual. When I discuss a case such as this in my courses, I try to provide other examples of positive role models among corporate executives. Granted, most of these examples do not involve accounting or auditing matters, but, nevertheless, they help to blunt the impression that students may receive from studying my cases that most corporate executives are “crooks.”

“Ethics is about how we meet the challenge of doing the right thing when that will cost more than what we want to pay.” (The Josephson Institute of Ethics) When I think about everything that I have learned within the Business Ethics class, I think of one topic – Understanding Ethics. This teaches you many things like what ethics is, how to understand right and wrong, ethical reasoning and much more. “The field of ethics is the study of how we try to live our lives according to a standard of “right” or “wrong” behavior–in both how we think and behave toward others and how we would like them to think and behave towards us.” (Business Ethics Now, Ghillyer, 4) Some people consider ethics to be a conscious choice to follow a set of moral standards or ethical principles that supply direction on how they should perform in their daily lives; others, however, look to the behavior of others to decide what is an acceptable standard of right and wrong or good and bad behavior. Many factors including how they were raised, their religion, and the transitions and beliefs of their society drive their definition of the right or wrong. Judgments are made about good or bad behavior by moral standards, which are principles based on religious, cultural, or philosophical beliefs. These beliefs can come from many different sources such as family, friends, ethnic background, religion, school, the media–television, radio, newspapers magazines, the Internet, and personal role models and mentors.

The word “fraud” was magnified in the business world around the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002. No one had seen anything like it. Enron, one of the country’s largest energy companies, went bankrupt and took down with it Arthur Andersen, one of the five largest audit and accounting firms in the world. Enron was followed by other accounting scandals such as WorldCom, Tyco, Freddie Mac, and HealthSouth, yet Enron will always be remembered as one of the worst corporate accounting scandals of all time. Enron’s collapse was brought upon by the greed of its corporate hierarchy and how it preyed upon its faithful stockholders and employees who invested so much of their time and money into the company. Enron seemed to portray that the goal of corporate America was to drive up stock prices and get to the peak of the financial mountain by any means necessary. The “Conspiracy of Fools” is a tale of power, crony capitalism, and company greed that lead Enron down the dark road of corporate America.

Autonomy – The ideal of self-determination is the basis for autonomy. It is important that a patient be allowed to decide what should be done to his or her own body. In other words, nobody else has the right to assert their power over another. Likewise, a physician should be allowed to decide not to perform a procedure if doing so would conflict with his or her values. In the Cruzan case, Nancy’s autonomy by way of her parents’ substituted judgment was overridden in favor of the State of Missouri’s policy to preserve life. Although the Supreme Court did not deny that Nancy had the right to refuse nutrition/hydration, there was not enough clear and convincing evidence to know that refusal was what Nancy truly

In the summer of 2001, questions began to arise about the integrity of Houston energy company Enron’s financial statements. In December, they filed for bankruptcy as their fraud came to light and the United States government froze all of their assets and began prosecuting their executives and their external auditing firm Arthur Anderson (Franzel 2014). Enron was not the only company using accounting loopholes to mislead stockholders though; Global Crossing, Tyco, Aldephia, WorldCom, and Waste Management all underwent investigation for similar

The agencies not only discovered the complex web of fictitious partnerships that hid Enron’s massive debt but also that the company’s external accounting firm, Arthur Anderson, was creating materially false and misleading audit reports. . The true nature of Enron’s massive financial losses was shown to the public and the stock price plunged, causing investors to lose billions of dollars. Enron, however, was just the first and largest scandal to become public. Numerous companies including Tyco, WorldCom, and Kmart were found to have inflated earnings (Martin & Combs, 2010, 103). Investors had been manipulated to invest into companies that followed unethical business practice thereby shattering future investor confidence.

This ethics case focuses on a non-partner manager for a CPA firm who decides to leave the firm to work in the private industry. The manager’s name is Candy Bookit and the CPA firm she was working for is Ima, Sharp and Crooke. The case begins with Candy deciding to leave the CPA firm to accept a controllership position with Artifice Company, a company who was a client of her CPA firm. Artifice Company was a holding company for a group of family-owned corporations that were all heavily involved in government projects. The company consists of a series of more than twenty businesses owned in whole or part by the Addams family. While with the CPA firm, Candy was involved with the business consulting end of the relationship in

2) Freegard (2006) states: “Autonomy as an ethical principle encompasses the fundamental protection and respect of persons, and freedom from interference ... A competent client should have the right to decide what is to be done with his or her body” (p. 112).

In much of the business world from the past to today, we constantly are exposed to unethical behaviors and situations of conflict within the work environment. Thinking critically about a particular dilemma and whether or not it is ethically wrong takes time and critical thinking. The accountants of Enron could have avoided this situation by stepping in and explaining to their superiors the cost of the long-term consequences compared to the short-term benefits was not worth what they were putting out on the line. By analyzing the Enron scandal there will be a greater ability to know information that will help pin point any unethical behavior that an accountants may experience in their own work life. Justin Schultz, a corporate psychologist

The demise of so-called corporate giants dates back to 476 A.D. with the fall of the Roman Empire. The decline of the Roman Empire can be compared to today 's failures in corporate America. Such viewpoints suggest that decay, financial problems and division of an empire were some of the causes. In particular, economic issues were a major factor. Economic decay included trade deficit, environmental changes, hoarding of the bullion, looting of the treasury, lack of leadership and disorganization (Gill). Again, it is hard to believe that these were some of the root causes. However, they sound all too familiar with the corporate failures that have been crashing to earth recently.

The word “ethics” comes from Greek ethikas meaning character. Today, we use ethics to describe the normative standard of behavior. The history of philosophical ethics has been broken up into five rational methods: Virtue, Traditional, Modern, and Post-Modern Ethics. Within these periods, the philosophy of ethics changed along with the changes being made within society.

It is difficult to find an example of a more spectacular business failure than the recent collapse of Arthur Andersen. Within a few years, Andersen moved from one of the largest professional service organisations in the world to almost complete collapse. The impact of the firm's failure on its employees, customers, investors, and the general public is hard to overstate. Its once proud reputation had been reduced to shambles. Even the President of the United States joked:

Business Industry has witnessed the outcomes of bad moral decisions taken by business leaders. Enron’s story is only one example of corporate scandals and cases of bad moral decisions, which has not only shaken the public trust in corporations, but also affected the bank accounts of investors and employees. Before the bankruptcy of Enron; it was included in one of the fortune 500 companies after its fraudulent accounting case the share went down to $1 (Enron scandal, 2010; PBS, 2002; Godwin, 2006; Godwin, 2008).

Enron and Arthur Anderson were both giants in their own industry. Enron, a Texas based company in the energy trading business, was expanding rapidly in both domestic and global markets. Arthur Anderson, LLC. (Anderson), based out of Chicago, was well established as one of the big five accounting firms. But the means by which they achieved this status became questionable and eventually contributed to their demise. Enron used what if often referred to as “creative” accounting methods, this resulted in them posting record breaking earnings. Anderson, who earned substantial audit and consultation fees from Enron, failed to comply with the auditing standards required in their line of work. Investigations and reports have resulted in finger

The case of Enron Corporation and Andersen, LLP can be noted as one of the most infamous fraud scandals in US history. Investors lost millions of dollars and ruined the public’s trust. Enron was once the seventh largest public company in the United States and Andersen LLP was the world’s largest and most respected business organizations. Enron’s stock prices soared to approximately $100 to less than $10 in 2001. How did these two big giants fall into oblivion and what could have been done to avoid the disaster of these companies?