Teaching Ethics in Accounting

Video Transcript

"This is financial advisor Patrick Munro talking about teaching ethics in accounting. Accounting is a principal profession that primarily involves record keeping and wrote for the most part. One would think that ethics has no place really in that profession. As evidenced by most of the scandal and malfeasance that has happened from Wall Street and various entities as well, it's clear that ethics is a huge situation that accountants must be aware of and in fact is one of the largest parts of their practice nowadays for newly minted CPAs. Ethics primarily result in having the companies that you represent, or your own company if you're the CFO, to make sure that all the reporting, financial data from your company is done in a compliant matter, all tax laws are followed and all income and projections, especially if your a public company, all your SEC filings must be succinct and honest in nature because any deviation from that, or puffing as we call it, puffing up sales results and things of that nature could result in the public having a misread on the value of your stock and when the accounting is ultimately revealed for what it is, the public would tend to be damaged and harmed as the stock plummets in a downward motion. Ethics is very critical, and this is financial advisor Patrick Munro, talking about the importance of teaching ethics in accounting."