Impact of Unethical Behavior Analysis

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ACC/291
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The unethical practices & behavior in today’s business accounting often goes unchecked, because the actions directly affect management or executives, since they usually control this accounting hence the results. If someone thinks their job might be in jeopardy they may falsify thinks for these members of management. As it seems obvious, falsifying or altering business documents such as sales receipts, or tampering with reports would be considered unethical practices. According to Anonymous Employee (n.d.), "Among the most common unethical business behaviors of employees are making long-distance calls on business lines, duplicating software for use at home, falsifying the number of hours worked, or much more serious and illegal practices, such as embezzling money from the business, or falsifying business records.” (para. 1). Among those situational examples which include embezzlement of funds by an accountant from their employers for financial gain also include accountants receiving corporate pressure from their client to report false information and having unrealistic objectives and deadlines. “An accountant may decide to work for a company even though a conflict of interest may exist. If the accountant is owed money or has a significant stake in a firm, he or she may not be the ideal individual to prepare certain companies' financial statements.” (Jacobsen, 2008, para. 10).

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 is legislation enacted for the protection from the unethical behaviors. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act puts rules in place to hold executives accountable for the accuracy of their organization’s financial statements. The rules that are put in place achieve harsher punishments and criminal penalties for non-compliance. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act does its best to ensure financial statements be