Swift 1 ACCT 642-B01 LUO Discussion Thread 4, Reply 2: Ethics and Professional Judgement in Accounting Luke, I enjoyed reading your thread this week and agreed with the stance you took as well as the statements included. You made a good point when you described how Mark's firm grew quickly and had become successful over the years after working for Mr. McAdams at Pure Water Company. Mark was not just a new CPA learning the profession, but he was experienced and knew what the profession and the AICPA required of him. Surely, he knew that his actions were unethical and continued to charge Mr. McAdams and Fitzgerald Flooring for services he never completed. However, if Mark overlooked these two individuals, he would have responded immediately when the IRS attempted to contact him, and Mark would have taken action to fix his mistakes if he was an ethical individual (Mintz & Morris, 2020). On the other hand, Mark was unethical in his deliberate actions in deceiving the Pure Water Company and Fitzgerald Flooring. Mark violated many principles of the AICPA's Code of Professional Conduct and one of those was that of integrity. The AICPA (2014) described that to comply with the principle of integrity, a member must "maintain and broaden public confidence, members should perform all professional responsibilities with the highest sense of integrity" (p. 6). Mark did not show integrity when he continually deceived the Pure Water Company and Fitzgerald by collecting fees and never performing the promised work. If Mark desired to have integrity, he would have never deceived the two parties and if his actions were a mistake, Mark would have taken responsibility for his actions immediately when the IRS contacted him the first time. Unfortunately, Mark decided to not act ethically and continued his deceptive actions until he was ultimately suspended from practicing accounting.
Swift 2 Reference AICPA. (2014, December 15).Code of professional conduct. https://pub.aicpa.org/codeofconduct/Ethics.aspx# Mintz, S., & Morris, R. (2020). Ethical Obligations and Decision-Making in Accounting: Text and Cases (5th ed.). New York, NY. McGraw-Hill Education. ISBN: 9781259969461
