Viktoriya Yaroslavtseva
Week 1 Homework: Professional Code of Ethics
ACCT562-621000
Prof William Whitley
March 8, 2015
How do the codes complement each other? Provide three other notable points of information from each site that either you learned for the first time or have found useful in your current work role. Lastly, both organizations have standards. Why are standards important in these fields? A Code of Ethics is a written set of guidelines issues by an organization to its employees. This code of ethics is designed to be a guide for all employees in support of day to day decision making tasks. It should provide clear guidance in the types of behavior that is to be accepted and expected. “It is meant to clarify the organization’s mission, values and principles, linking them with the standards of professional conduct.” (ERC, 2009) The code is a way for all employees to get to know the company they are preparing to work for by understanding their mission statement, guidelines for behavior, important values, and a guide in dealing with ethical and moral behaviors which can be encountered through day to day tasks. The Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) and the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) both concentrate on the same values and ethics for a professional accountant although both fields have a slightly different objective. An internal auditor mainly focuses on assessing performance of the company, identifying any room and opportunity for improvements with economy, efficiency and effectiveness, and lastly it focuses on developing recommendations. (Reider, 2002) Fraud examination, on the other hand, most focuses on resolving all allegations of fraud from tipsters, past documents, accounting clues, and interviews. When looking at the IIA Code of Ethics, as well as the ACFE Code of Ethics, the main focus would be the actions of the accountant. The words integrity are both pretty high on the list with both codes of ethics and states that the auditors must uphold the principle of integrity and establish trust and thus provide the basis for reliance on one’s judgment. Integrity means the individual needs to be able to perform their work with the outmost honesty, diligence and responsibility. (IIA) ACFE states that each fraud examiner needs to be able to uphold the highest level of integrity when performing all professional assignments. These ideas overlap each other since they both stress the importance of integrity, objectivity, and ethical and legal behaviors
When looking through the IIA and the ACFE sites I notice an abundance of reading material that can help an individual in making a professional decision. This information is accessible to both the individual belonging to the group and also to the general public. There are items like downloadable material, registration for seminars that will talk about important up to date topics, and online stores. These online stores offer items such as exam preparation material for members at a discount rate and for non-members for the regular full price. An example of a great seminar could be found on the IIA website under Training & Events, Seminars and an individual could browse either by topic or by location. I was also able to see that both the IIA and the ACFE require candidates who meet the criteria to obtain professional recommendations from current active members in the given field which is something new I’ve learned. It also states both organizations require that each candidate pass the entry exam for certification, which is the same study material
