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Taylor Gomm

Cari Black

ACCT 2010

01 March 2019

Personal Ethics and Financial Reporting

What are personal ethics and how do we form our own personal ethics? Personal ethics

are the basic principles and values that we use to make decisions. We start to form our very own

ethics at a young age and it is often influenced by many factors such as our family and religion.

Many other factors also play a significant role in our ethics as we get older. The internet, social

norms and friends. As we are growing and are developing we watch these people and learn by

their examples. Their influence helps us shape our idea of right and wrong. Our knowledge,

values, morals, goals and even our personality are shaped from the environment we grew up in.

We are faced with multiple decisions where an ethical choice must be made. For

example, if you are in a position where you have been asked to terminate someone from your

place of employment by someone above you and you feel the termination is not justified and is

wrong you are faced with an ethical decision. Sometimes it’s hard to make these ethical choices

because we want to do what is morally right but we also have a job to do. In this situation you

could stand up for what you feel is right or do what your boss asked of you.

In financial reporting people are faced with ethical decisions frequently. Doing what is

morally right is always harder for people when they are dealing with money and business

situations. When your job and reputation are on the line we may at times make an unethical

decision for fear of it making them look bad as an employee. How you as an individual
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approach things ethically will play a role in your decision making when it come to how to handle

situations in financial reporting.

There are many times in our lives when we face hardships. If an opportunity arose where

you were able to make some unethical choices to try and fix these hardships in your life. You

may want to take advantage of this opportunity although there is great risk. This could have a

huge negative impact on an organization’s financial reporting. Whether it is you or a co-worker

you have multiple ways you could respond to the situation. You can choose to go with your

moral compass or you can choose to go against it. In the end we all have our own ethical

compass that guides our choices. In financial accounting it can be challenging to make sure

everyone on your team uses their best judgment morally and ethically.

In conclusion even if it is difficult at the time reacting to a situation in an ethical manner

will never bring any regrets in the end.