A Code Of Ethics: Ethical Behavior In Accounting

Introduction
Professional accountants have a key role in keeping, auditing and inspecting the financial records of individuals or business concerned and preparing the financial and tax reports. It has a unique characteristic which includes the public interest. Whilst acting in the public interest, a professional accountant has certain rules or code to act in accordance with.
Ethical behavior is inherent in the practice of accounting due to responsibilities the profession has toward serving clients, the public and fellow practitioners. This ethical behavior is reflected in the code of conduct in diverse accountancy professional organizations. Hence, ethical behaviour is likely of accountancy students consistent with that of a practicing accountant.

Part C of the code describes examples of threats that could be encountered and likely safeguards that can be useful to make sure that threats are either eliminated or reduced to acceptable level. It does not explain all potential situation or relationships that members in business might come across that could create threats to compliance with fundamental principles members are encourage to be alert and may consider obtaining legal advice if they believe unethical behaviour will continue to occur within the employing organisation. The FIA code of ethics dose not apportions its principles and rules in this manner. (APES 110 Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants,

Professional accountants are required to comply with the fundamental principles of APES 110 code and apply a “conceptual framework approach” to determine their compliance with the fundamental principles whenever they know that circumstance or relationships may compromise their compliance. While the onus is on the professional accountant to do this, the bulk of APES 110 code of ethics describes how the conceptual framework applies in specific situations, for example when receiving gifts or other inducements form a superior may threaten corporate accountants objectivity. Like the FIA code, the APES 110 provides guidance for the more common but certainly not all practice situations. in all the other instance, once a threat is identified, the APES 110 requires a professional accountant to evaluate the significance of the threat and if the treat is insignificant, no further evaluation is required, or if the threat is significant than consider whether safeguards could eliminate or sufficiently reduce the threat to an acceptable level. Despite the principles vs. rule argument, the APES code of ethics does contain de facto rules, in several instance the code states that the threat are so significant that no safeguards can be applied to reduce or eliminate treats to an acceptable level for example, an audit team member could not own