Discussion Board 2:
Consequentialism and deontology are two ethical moral philosophies discussed in our text.
According to the two ethical philosophies, an individual's duty and responsibility might be
different with stockholders, vendors, government regulation entities, employees, upper
management and the board of directors.
Can you provide an accounting example to
support how the two ethical moral philosophies might lead an individual to different
actions with upper management, other employees, Board of Directors, and suppliers?
Consequentialism is a theory that relies if the outcome is more beneficial or harmful for the
affected party. “If an act improves the collective happiness of those who are affected by it, a
decision is judged to be ethical” [CITATION Kle16 \p 43 \l 1033 ]. This theory is a common
example of utilitarianism, which is a theory of morality, which promotes behaviors that
encourage joy or satisfaction and disagrees with behaviors that cause misery or harm
[ CITATION Tar20 \l 1033 ].
According to deontologists, there are two parts that comprises the universality and the
reversibility principle. The universality principles includes rules that should apply to everyone in
any type of situation such as “Do not cause physical harm, respect others’ privacy, respect
freedom of association, honor agreements and respect property rights, promote impartial justice,
and be truthful” [CITATION Kle16 \p 49 \l 1033 ]. The reversibility principle consist the concept
of the “Golden Rule”, which means “treating others as you would like them to treat you”
[CITATION Kle16 \p 49 \l 1033 ]. I believe everyone should the follow the “Golden Rule”
because this would help prevent conflicts and potential violence in the world and everyone can
get along with no issues.
The most controversial topic regarding ethical dilemmas in the accounting world is the Enron
Accounting scandal. One type of fraud of the employees in the accounting department is
financial statement fraud. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) identifies
bookkeeping scheme as "deception or misrepresentation that an individual or entity makes
knowing that the misrepresentation could result in some unauthorized benefit to the individual or
to the entity or some other party” (Bloomenthal, 2020, para. 5). One of the most common types
of financial statement fraud is overstating profits to make investors think that a company is more
profitable than it really is. This is what happened at Enron. The managers at Enron worked with
their accountant Arthur Anderson to falsify their profits in their financial statement because they
did not want to report a loss. Enron created a power plant in order to fabricate revenue on its
