A Simple Tool for Ethical Decision Making in the Workplace A friend of mine, Paul Falcone, who is well known in the HR field, posted an article on LinkedIn. I greatly appreciate his letting me use it for today's blog. It has a lot of great advice. HR Managers and... Read more →
When Should an Audit Firm Walk Away from a Client? I worked for Arthur Young longer ago than I choose to remember. I always felt the firm was committed to ethical behavior, and for the most part it was. I can remember a training session where a video was shown... Read more →
A Cautionary Tale I’ve always been intrigued by the philosophy of whistleblowing. It is an act of conscience and not motivated by self-interest. A broad view of whistleblowing is the disclosure by organization members (former or current) of illegal, immoral, or illegitimate practices under the control of their employers, to... Read more →
Setting an Ethical Tone at the Top I have previously blogged about the importance of having a code of conduct for all organizations. A code of conduct establishes the ethical principles upon which the behavior of employees will be judged. It helps to distinguish right from wrong. A code provides... Read more →
One’s Motive for Acting is the Key Is whistleblowing a moral practice? Different views exist on this important issue. Generally, the act of whistleblowing should be motivated by good intentions – i.e., to right a wrong. On the other hand, if the motive is to gain a financial reward or... Read more →
Book Review I want to share with my readers a review of my accounting ethics textbook that was just published in The CPA Journal. I am proud to say the review highly recommends the book. This is the sixth edition of my book that spans more than twenty years of... Read more →
What Should Be Included in Your Code of Ethics? I have previously blogged about the importance of establishing an ethical culture in an organization to support the code of ethics. A code is meaningless unless top management models ethical behavior in every action and decision made. Purpose of a Code... Read more →
Has COVID Caused a Decline in Corporate Governance The case for business ethics has been well demonstrated through the costs and impacts of the repeated high-profile cases of corporate greed and misconduct. Often those integrity failures are a result of individuals crossing ethical boundaries as well as ignoring or circumventing... Read more →
Will Whistleblowers Still Come Forward? A new SEC rule interpretation threatens to weaken the incentive for external whistleblowers to come forward with details about potential corporate fraud. The clarification states that a whistleblower’s tip has to offer insight “beyond what would be reasonably apparent” to the agency from publicly available... Read more →
Building an Ethical Workplace Environment By Victoria Delgadillo, September 30, 2020 The following guest blog was written by Victoria Delgadillo, a student at Pepperdine University. The Broken Window Theory has recently been applied to enhance organizational culture in the workplace. It holds that a company should take care of the... Read more →