Ethical Dilemmas and Decision Making in Accounting

Accountants have a crucial role to play in today’s global business life as they are key providers of financial information to investors, lenders and other stakeholders of companies. They are expected to maintain records of reliable and trustworthy information and also to behave in responsibly while carrying out their professional duties. On another hand, the recent financial reporting scandals indicate that like other professions, accountants also can face ethical dilemmas and behave unethically (which has resulted in the loss of reputation for some accountants and almost damaged the profession to a serious extent). Another issue is decision making in accounting which has some ethical dilemmas, a situation requiring more than just technical competence. For this reason, an understanding of the ethical decision making environment in which accountants function is important. In this study, the importance of ethics in the area of accounting, the ethical dilemmas and ethical decision making process which accountants confront are discussed extensively in order to enable our readers to understand the issues and suggest responsible solutions for dealing with them.

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Authors and Affiliations

1. Business Administration Department, Yildiz Technical University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, 34349, Besiktos, Istanbul, Turkey Arzu Ozsozgun Caliskan & Emel Esen
2. Business Administration Department, Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey Halil Emre Akbas

1. Arzu Ozsozgun Caliskan