Discipline
Christopher Ziebell
ACCT530
Week 4
1/29/15

Discipline to me is a type of training in order to teach someone to follow the rules. I think it applies to all of us when it comes to the professional world. When someone gets hired at new company there is always some sort of discipline in the beginning. If someone has experience in the work that they are hired to do doesn’t mean that they don’t still need training on how the company operates. I have a perfect example of this when I switched from one CPA firm to another. I know how to prepare various tax returns, but I still required discipline in how the back-up documentation was sorted and reported. The first CPA firm I worked for relied heavily on paper files. We would have a lead sheet with various hard copies of client records to back up the lead sheets numbers on the tax return itself. Then when I started working out the new CPA firm they were at the level working with various clients in a paperless environment. All records brought in by clients were scanned into our servers and then given back to the client. They required that I have PDF files for all numbers that I used in tax return. Not just that but on a line by line basis per tax form used. The point I am trying to make is that I still needed discipline even though I was previously trained in tax accounting. Not just that you might have to adapt your discipline depending on the type of changes the company goes through with new technology advancements and improvements. According to the state of Illinois my trait discipline encompass the rules of professional conduct. People in the professional world that reside in the state of Illinois should use the professional conduct. Here is the general summary for the stats of Illinois:
“The Rules of Professional Conduct are rules of reason. They should be interpreted with reference to the purposes of legal representation and of the law itself. Some of the Rules are imperatives, cast in the terms “shall” or “shall not.” These define proper conduct for purposes of professional discipline. Others, generally cast in the term “may,” are permissive and define areas under the Rules in which the lawyer has discretion to exercise professional judgment. No disciplinary action should be taken when the lawyer chooses not to act or acts within the bounds of such discretion. Other Rules define the nature of relationships between the lawyer and others. The Rules are thus partly obligatory and disciplinary and partly constitutive and descriptive in that they define a lawyer’s professional role. Many of the Comments use the term “should.” Comments and the Preamble and Scope do not add obligations to the Rules but provide guidance for practicing in compliance with the Rules (IL Supreme Court, 2009).”
So other companies and organizations of the state of Illinois should use this as a guide when creating their own professional code of conduct. It will should also be passed on to your own employees in your own type of discipline. It also stated the discipline should be imposed or the company could be faced with a violation as stated below:
“Failure to comply with an obligation or prohibition imposed by a Rule is a basis for invoking the disciplinary process. The Rules presuppose that disciplinary assessment of a lawyer’s conduct will be made on the basis of the facts and circumstances as they existed at the time of the conduct in question and in recognition of the fact that a lawyer often has to act upon uncertain or incomplete evidence of the situation. Moreover, the Rules presuppose that whether or not discipline should be imposed for a violation, and the severity of a sanction, depend on all the circumstances, such as the willfulness and seriousness of the violation, extenuating factors and whether there have been previous violations (IL Supreme Court, 2009). The AICPA treated the trait discipline in two different ways. The first being accounting as an overall discipline that would provide financial and other information essential to the efficient conduct and evaluation of the activities of any organization (AICPA, p.382). Then they turned the word around as a type of punishment. Using the word in the reference that a member could not be disciplined for a member practicing outside the United States. Other instances in the AICPA professional code of conduct follow along the same lines as well. Outside of their professional code of conduct on a separate part of their website they talked disciplinary actions. Such actions like terminations and suspensions regarding disciplinary articles. I was able to find that two different articles through the journal of accountancy spoke of the word discipline in the same terms as the AICPA. One being in a term of training or learning and the other in the form of punishment or violation.
The first article having to do with training spoke about IFRS and the cultural differences that accountants would have to adapt when interacting with different countries. A social psychology researcher Geert Hofstede came up with a framework to help breach the cultural barriers. It stated in the article that, “Hofstede’s cultural framework has been used extensively in management and other disciplines to examine the influence of national culture on organizational and individual performance (Campbell, Doupnik, Tsakumi, 2009).”
The second article spoke about the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) how to handle social media posts. This only related to NLRB employers where the employees could be discipline or even terminated for their social media postings. They were discussing going after employees union and nonunion alike which would subject the same disciplinary action for social media postings. The NLRB did set up a section 7 which would protect certain work-related conversations conducted on social media, without taking consideration the employer’s interest in limiting harm to the business (Lapidus & Ference, 2014). It is nicer to that the NLRB may force an employer to reinstate the employee and even pay for damages such as back pay. I think that should be the case especially dealing with the constitution and freedom of speech.
As you can see there are two main ways that discipline can be used. One being the fact that is in a disciplinary or punishment action. Then in a way of training or improving yourself in a certain way. I have personally been on the side of training and not have been in situation with any of my employers where I had to face a type of disciplinary action. I hope to continue that streak or not be disciplined in the future.

REFERENCE PAGE

1) In The Supreme Court of The State of Illinois. (July 1, 2009). Article VIII, Illinois Rules of Professional Conduct of 2010. Retrieved from: http://www.state.il.us/court/SupremeCourt/Rules/Art_VIII/ArtVIII_NEW.htm#scope

2) American Institute of CPAs. (June 1, 2013). Code of Professinal Conduct and Bylaws. Retrieved from: http://www.aicpa.org/Research/Standards/CodeofConduct/DownloadableDocuments/2013June1CodeOfProfessionalConduct.pdf

3) American Institute of CPAs. Disciplinary Actions. Retrieved from: http://www.aicpa.org/FORTHEPUBLIC/DISCIPLINARYACTIONS/Pages/default.aspx

4) David R. Campbell Sr., Timothy S. Doupnik, George T. Tsakumis. (January 31, 2009). IFRS: Beyond the Standards. Retrieved from: http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2009/feb/ifrsbeyondthestandards

5) Sarah Becket Ference, CPA, Laura Lapidus, ESQ. (October 31, 2014). Are social media posts protected? What all employers need to know about NLRB and social media. Retrieved from: http://journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2014/nov/nlrb-social-media.html