Accounting Ethics: The Significance of Integrity and Trustworthiness

This essay explores the fundamental importance of integrity within the accounting profession and its direct impact on public trust. It emphasizes that accountants must be honest, candid, and forthright in all financial reporting, avoiding any actions that could lead to personal gain through confidential information. The essay highlights the role of ethical codes and professional conduct in ensuring consistency and adherence to accepted accounting principles. It stresses that integrity allows investors and business managers to trust financial information, enabling informed decision-making. Furthermore, it defines trustworthiness as the maintenance of integrity and honesty, which is crucial for the accounting profession to be seen as reliable and responsible. The essay concludes by emphasizing that integrity is the cornerstone of professional behavior, without which the accountant's work loses credibility. The essay also references key publications in the field, such as Duska, Duska, & Kury (2018), Mastracchio Jr, Jiménez-Angueira & Toth (2015), Soltani & Maupetit (2015), and West (2018).

Running head: ACCOUNTING ETHICS
Accounting ethics
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Integrity and how it builds public trustworthiness for accounting profession.
Integrity is the crucial fundamental element of accounting profession and it requires
the accountants to be candid, forthright and honest with the financial information of the
client. Accountants shall restrict themselves from the advantage or personal gain using the
confidential information (Mastracchio Jr, Jiménez-Angueira & Toth, 2015). In case of
differences or errors in the opinion regarding applicability of the accounting laws, the
professional accountants shall avoid intentional opportunity to manipulate and deceive the
financial information. Private companies or the public accounting firms often develop the
conduct for accountants or code of ethics. These conduct rules or ethics assure that all the
accountants act in the consistent manner. In absence of the specific standards or rules, the
accountants shall review the actions for assuring that they are complying with the commonly
accepted principles (Mastracchio Jr, Jiménez-Angueira & Toth, 2015).
In accounting, integrity and honesty play crucial role as it allows the investors to trust
information received by them regarding the entities in which the investors invest. Further, the
business managers depend on the honest accounting for running their organizations without
the fear of biased reporting. Integrity in accounting is primary characteristics of accounting
profession as it allows the organization and decisions makers in taking appropriate
judgments. Further, integrity is important as the trusts of public are built upon that. Without
adherence to strict ethical and moral guidelines of profession, no value is there for the work
of accountant. The accountant may have all the knowledge, experience and skill regarding his
profession however without integrity and trust the work will become questionable (West,
2018). Owing to this, it is important in general, for the public and the clients those rely on the
financial information for the purpose of decision making assessing the accountant’s integrity.
Further, the accountant not only shall be willing to act ethically but shall also maintain all
skills for ensuring to do the best possible job. Further, trustworthiness is defined as

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maintaining the standards of integrity and honesty. Professional who maintains integrity is
considered as trustworthy. Though trustworthiness can be improved over time however with
the time and effort it can be improved (Soltani & Maupetit, 2015).
The distinguishable hallmark for the accounting profession is the acceptance of
responsibility for considering the public interest. Ethics and integrity shall be at the centre of
the professional life for achieving public trust. While taking into consideration the public
interest, responsibility of the professional accountants is not only to satisfy the requirements
of individual employer or client. This is crucial as the performance shall be aligned with the
profession to achieve the reasonable expectation of society (Duska, Duska & Kury, 2018).
Core meaning of integrity is the quality of character of any person but it is always regarding
doing the right thing. Hence, integrity is cornerstone of the professional behavior. Amongst
all other things, integrity is essential and it requires that as a whole the professional shall
maintain straightforwardness, honesty, truthfulness, fair dealing and without these things the
profession will lose its credibility. Hence, it can be stated that the accountant can build
trustworthiness if he/she maintains integrity (Duska, Duska & Kury, 2018).

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Reference
Duska, R. F., Duska, B. S., & Kury, K. W. (2018). Accounting ethics. Wiley-Blackwell.
Mastracchio Jr, N. J., Jiménez-Angueira, C., & Toth, I. (2015). The state of ethics in business
and the accounting profession. The CPA Journal, 85(3), 48.
Soltani, B., & Maupetit, C. (2015). Importance of core values of ethics, integrity and
accountability in the European corporate governance codes. Journal of Management
& Governance, 19(2), 259-284.
West, A. (2018). After virtue and accounting ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 148(1), 21-
36.