On the other hand, accountants must fulfil the requirements of their employers and ensure
quality fulfilment of their duties and appropriate representation of the company they work for.
It’s no secret that often they are faced with the dilemma of choosing between behaviour while
strictly adhering to the norms of ethics and satisfying owner’s/client’s/company director’s
requirements that breach the norms of professional and personal ethics; between tolerance to
and approval of colleagues’ unethical behaviour and disclosure of such behaviour; giving
priority to the formation of the company’s image, even though artificial and simulated, and
the provision of objective and true information without violating the requirements of
professional ethics.
The ethics of professional accountants is attributable to the area of applied ethics and is
normally related with business ethics. Business employs the principles of ethics for the
achievement of strategic goals. Being business development specialists, accountants are also
working for that goal. Consequently, in the context of business ethics, accounting ethics
means improvement of accountants’ virtues and humanisation of their activities. On the other
hand, accountants are often required by business to behave in a way that is inconsistent with
their moral principles, whereas the profession of accountants requires particular adherence to
ethical requirements. Inborn virtues and morals of individuals are considered to be one of
decisive factors forming the ethics of this profession. However, insufficient or inappropriate
understanding of the norms of ethics or wrong interpretation thereof by accountants or
individuals acting in their environment leads to the formation of unethical behaviour of
accountants and creates the problems of accounts handling and finance management. It is
necessary, therefore, to theoretically and practically analyse and evaluate how accountants’
ethics is impacted by their behaviour which is formed by virtues, business and the
professional environment