The Ethics of Accounting and Finance: Trust, Responsibility, and Control

Edited and revised specifically for this volume, here are the best papers from the Tenth National Conference on Business Ethics, sponsored by Bentley College’s Center for Business Ethics. Throughout, the contributors emphasize the ethical dimensions of problems and issues that confront the financial services and accounting industries, issues that are also of critical importance to business generally. Included among the contributors are members of the academic community, lawyers, government officials, and financial services and accounting professionals, each with his or her own special perspective, but all focused on the central theme: the importance of ethics and its proper role in the way financial services and accounting are done. Throughtful, challenging reading, not only for academics but for finance and accounting professionals as well.

Part I examines the ethics of the fiduciary relationship between principals and agents, defining the nature of trust and helping readers understand the fiduciary responsibility and conflicts of interest characteristic to the industry. In Part II, the contributors look at specific issues in ethics and financial disclosure, with particular focus on nonprofit healthcare organizations, financial derivatives, and confidentiality in a professional context as representative cases. More cases are presented in Part III, examining a variety of situations and events, such as the BCCI affair and the failure of banks. Part IV offers lessons from the past and a look toward the future, with such topics as the ethics of financial derivatives in the history of economic thought and the development of moral reasoning and professional judgment of auditors in public practice.