An International Meeting of the American Accounting Association American Accounting Association 2006 Annual Meeting August 6–9, 2006 Washington, D.C.

Joni J Young
University of New Mexico

Abstract: This paper examines arguments found in the Journal of Accountancy designed to persuade practitioners to follow the code of ethics or accept the necessity for changes to it. Following the work of Dewey, I argue that such arguments form an aspect of our social habits that have and continue to impact thinking about ethical responsibilities including the items that considered to be ethical issues. The arguments found in these texts centered on several themes: the connections between a code and professional status, the boundary-drawing capacity of a code to separate accountants from businesspersons and well as to separate “good” from “bad” accountants and the returns to be gained from ethical behavior (i.e., ethics pays). The papers examined here made very few connections between ethics and the nature of the relationship to be cultivated between the auditor and the public. In addition, the emphasis upon “ethics pay” potentially eradicates a sense of obligation to the public.

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