Ethics in Accounting and Financial Decision Making

Ethics in Accounting and Financial Decision Making

In today's business world, many organizations place a great emphasis on ethics and the financial decision making process within organizations, however, all organizations don’t have a code of ethics or they apply to someone officers of said organization, with some different according to status. However, experts believe that it should apply to all employees and for those organizations with out a code of ethics; they should provide an explanation why they don’t have one, because all are expected to behave in an ethical manner in the current economy (Narvan& Pittman, 2003).

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was signed into law on 30th July 2002, and introduced highly significant legislative changes to financial practice and corporate governance regulation. It introduced timeframes, stringent new rules with the stated objective: "to protect investors by improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures made pursuant to the securities laws" (Matrix0, 2007).

Experts admit organizations have many options for adopting the code of ethics however, according to his August 2006 article, “Beyond Sarbanes-Oxley, Neil S. Lebovits, states there are three best practices to adopt in your organization, to ensure its ethical health. He suggests to cultivate ethical role models, demonstrate ethical decision-making, and to encourage pushback.

Working for the department of health for about 5 years now, it has a code of conduct policy; however, it seems to apply to certain employees and should be applied to the way it delivers service to their clients. The three best practices as stated by Lebovits, should be implemented into their business, Duval County Health Department hired a new director August, 2006 and within the first year, he had revamped upper management due to unethical practices; paid vacations complements of the taxpayers, with some of them going together, unauthorized raises, extended paid days off and others incidents. Most county health departments also involve itself into identity theft, because a client doesn’t have to produce an identification card or proof of insurance as long as the information checks out. They say it would be denying services if a client is turned away for not having those documents.