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Ronald F. Duska and Brenda Shay Duska. 2003. Accounting Ethics. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-21650-2. 277 pages, $31.95 (paper).
As accounting scandals barraged America's headlines in 2002, Accounting Ethics by business ethicist Ronald Duska and academic administrator and CPA Brenda Shay Duska could not have rolled off the printing press at a better time. With an objective tone and exploratory approach, Duska and Duska use their combined knowledge of ethical theories and accounting to examine the ethical dimensions of the profession as a vital function in the current economic system that relies on accurate financial information to operate efficiently. Although several pertinent topics are under-represented, the authors successfully identify key accounting ethics issues relating to today's business environment and provide insightful applications of ethics frameworks on contemporary accounting concepts.
Duska and Duska began writing the book in 2000, but as they submitted their manuscript to Blackwell Publishing in 2002, Enron and Arthur Andersen were in the midst of their now-infamous collapses. Thus, to keep the text as updated as possible, Accounting Ethics begins with a 35page section of The Wall Street Journal abstracts documenting the EnronAndersen debacle as it unfolded daily in headlines. Next comes a similar but more succinct chronology of the events that led to Worldcom's bankruptcy, which represents the biggest accounting fraud in history. These two sections provide salient case studies for accounting ethics and reallife examples of earnings management, conflicts of interest, and poor governance.
The Duskas identify and dissect several key issues in accounting ethics shaped by today's business climate. One topic that has been in the spotlight ever since Arthur Levitt's tenure as U.S. securities and Exchange Commission Chairman is the potential for conflicts of interest to arise as a result of the expansion of accounting services beyond the traditional attest function (McNamee, 2000). Through the years, accounting companies have grown to become one-stop-shops for financial services-from management consulting to financial planning to IT services-and have preferred to call themselves professional service firms, not just accounting firms. The accounting industry has denied the alleged pressure to give favorable audit reviews to retain a client and/or to sell additional services, even though an alarming 75% of fees paid to accountants by audit clients in 2001 were for nonaudit services (Bryan-Low,...