Why is ethical awareness important

Your primary defense against unethical practices among your employees, managers and even yourself is ethical awareness in the workplace. All of your business activities, from the stockroom to the boardroom, have ethical implications. Promoting ethical awareness requires company-wide initiatives. Your business has a place in the community, whether that is a literal community around your premises or a virtual community of customers and other businesses like yours. Create awareness among your workforce of the importance of having a positive reputation in your community.

For example, if you operate a tire store, emphasize the importance of removing old tires from the back of the store and recycling them properly. Make your employees aware of the pitfalls of conflicts of interest, whether those conflicts involve an exchange of money or an exchange of favors. Business is about selling products or services to customers who value them. The latter of the definition is often where individual employees struggle to act ethically. It is important to understand that ethical behavior in the workplace can stimulate positive employee behaviors that lead to organizational growth, just as unethical behavior in the workplace can inspire damaging headlines that lead to organizational demise.

Simply put, organizational stakeholders that include individuals, groups and organizations of various types enter into a relationship with a business organization for that business to protect their interests in a specific way. A decision to act unethically, by the organization or a stakeholder, can strain the relationship and damage the reputation of the organization.

The increased risk of reputational damage and harm from negative headlines is often the catalyst for organizations to promote and encourage ethical behavior and prevent and report unethical behavior. Furthermore, where many individuals are connected to social media with mobile technology, the risk that unethical behavior will cause reputational damage to an organization is arguably much greater that in decades past, as behavior is more easily recorded on video, captured in photos, shared online and propelled into headlines.

However, there are benefits of ethical behavior in the workplace beyond the avoidance of reputational harm. An organization that is perceived to act ethically by employees can realize positive benefits and improved business outcomes. The perception of ethical behavior can increase employee performance, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, trust and organizational citizenship behaviors. Organizational citizenship behaviors include altruism, conscientiousness, civic virtue, sportsmanship and courtesy.

Therefore, as the level of ethical decisions of CPAs increases, their desire to create transparency also increases. This outcome suggests that these three concepts are strongly related to each other. Thus, there is a chain effect, where ethical awareness affects ethical decision making, which, in turn, affects the level of transparency.

Accordingly, hypothesis 3 is accepted. Therefore, as the level of ethical awareness of CPAs increases, their desire to create transparency also increases. This outcome suggests that even though we exclude the ethical decisions variable, transparency is directly affected by ethical awareness. Consequently, ethical awareness is a noteworthy factor that affects ethical decision making and transparency.

CPAs check what is the right thing to do when they are uncertain of what to do, and they do not hesitate to ask what is the right thing to do when something has gone wrong. This outcome indicates that they are ethically aware, which also allows them to make ethical decisions.

Therefore, according to the results of the analysis of the survey responses, most of the CPAs believe they generate transparent reports, but they still hesitate to trust their top managers and owners, who have the power and motivation to act in their own interests. This finding reveals a problem of trust among accountants in Turkey; specifically, it indicates a problem in the implementation of the penalties under related laws, even when such laws are considered inadequate and deterrent.

Thus, ethical awareness affects ethical decision making and transparency and therefore, when the levels of ethical decision making and transparency increase, the level of ethical awareness also increases. Hence, it would be helpful to provide ethics lessons in schools or raise more public awareness about ethics.

The major accounting scandals e. While accountants embrace their significant roles in generating and auditing financial information for the benefit of society, they face many ethical problems in their daily lives.

Their unethical practices can damage all interested parties, and for this reason, they should adapt to rapid changes in accounting standards and legislation to maintain their competitive power, and consequently, their ethics.

Therefore, the concepts of ethical awareness, ethical decision making, and transparency should be understood more clearly. This chapter clearly indicates the importance of ethics to accounting profession.

Ethical awareness, ethical decision making, and transparency are important concepts for every profession, individual and society. However, in terms of the accounting profession, it is not exaggerated to attach vital importance to the subject. The accounting profession at the production center of qualified information is important for all segments of the society in the light of the information they provide.

Therefore, efforts to raise ethical awareness, ethical decision making and transparency for professionals are needed. Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.

Help us write another book on this subject and reach those readers. Login to your personal dashboard for more detailed statistics on your publications. Edited by Asma Salman. We are IntechOpen, the world's leading publisher of Open Access books. Built by scientists, for scientists. Our readership spans scientists, professors, researchers, librarians, and students, as well as business professionals. Downloaded: Abstract This research aims to reveal the connections among ethical awareness, ethical decision making, and transparency from the perspective of certified public accountants CPAs in Istanbul.

Keywords ethical awareness ethical decision making transparency. Introduction Accounting is the language of business; it records information to present the overall financial picture of a firm to related parties and help them make decisions.

Transparency The word transparency means straight, very clear, honest, and true. Ethical regulations in accounting It is clearly accepted that preparing financial statement takes in the usage of judgment and assumptions.

Accounting profession ethics Accounting profession ethics is a set of rules that should be implemented by professional accountants during the execution of the activities and even in situations and periods in which professional activity is not carried out for any reason, to provide reliable information by paying attention to the value judgments of the society as well as making transactions in accordance with the laws and relations with customers, society, colleagues, and related sectoral organizations [ 12 ].

Ethical behavior awareness There are numerous opportunities for CPAs inside my company to take part in unethical practices 0. Table 1. Questionnaire item Average response Standard deviation Ethical behavior awareness 1. There are numerous opportunities for CPAs in my company to take part in unethical practices 0. CPAs in my company usually participate in practices that I think are unethical 2.

If I notice a mistake or manipulation in financial statements, I try to fix it myself 1. If I notice a mistake or manipulation in financial statements, I do not tell anyone 1. Being a whistle-blower is not always a bad thing 2. It is easy to violate transparency in financial reports in my company 2. My company tries to create a culture of transparency 0.

My company is more concerned with the bottom line than creating moral responsibility 1. It is easy to violate transparency in financial reports in other companies 1. Table 2. Table 3. Regression results. More Print chapter. How to cite and reference Link to this chapter Copy to clipboard. Available from:. Over 21, IntechOpen readers like this topic Help us write another book on this subject and reach those readers Suggest a book topic Books open for submissions.

More statistics for editors and authors Login to your personal dashboard for more detailed statistics on your publications. Access personal reporting. More About Us. There are numerous opportunities for CPAs outside of my company to take part in unethical practices.

I know the consequences of inadequate and deceitful financial reports created through unethical practices. Ethical behavior awareness. After a couple of days his hematocrit is still low and his physician tells him that he is not ready to be discharged today. L becomes angry and tells the team he wants to leave against medical advice AMA. His nurse, Susan, and his physician outline the risks of leaving, including the risk of rebleeding, but he insists and leaves the hospital.

That night, Mr. L ends up back in the Emergency Room with profuse GI bleeding. While leaving AMA is often viewed as a patient right based on the principle of autonomy, it is also necessary to consider whether the patient is putting himself at undue risk for harm. To promote Mr. Ethical awareness would help Susan recognize this responsibility. To address this obligation, Susan could try to talk through the situation in greater depth with Mr. L in an effort to uncover the reasoning behind his desire to leave.

There may be additional factors of which Susan is unaware that are contributing to Mr. If these reasons are explicated, perhaps they can arrive at a compromise to appease Mr. L, while keeping him medically safe. Additionally, Mr. This factor may be negatively impacting his decision-making abilities.

Susan may wonder whether Mr. L is truly making an autonomous decision, which would require that he fully understands and is able to use reason to determine the potential long-term outcomes of leaving the hospital.

Susan could further explore these concerns to ensure that Mr. Should she reach an impasse, she may consider seeking additional resources to keep Mr. L safe, including involving psychiatry and possibly an ethics consult. Scenario Three Emily is a new nurse on a medical-surgical unit. She has a busy assignment, and is behind on documentation. However she is happy to see her hypertensive patient, Mrs. O, is now normotensive. The medical team rounds on Mrs. O without Emily, and sees that the most recent blood pressure BP documented in the chart is still elevated.

They order an increase in Mrs. In an effort to help Emily catch up, a nurse colleague gives Mrs. O the new dose of medication. An hour later Mrs. O becomes diaphoretic and dizzy. When Emily rushes in to re-check her blood pressure, she is hypotensive. Because Emily was behind, the plan of care was changed based on old data, putting Mrs. O in a dangerous situation. Though Emily had good intentions, her patient was given an improper dose of medication. Using ethics-language, Emily was unable to provide beneficent good care, and her patient suffered a potential harm.

Nurses often fall behind during the course of a shift; this is a reality of practice. However, this scenario demonstrates that even something as simple and routine as charting vital signs has potential ethical implications. Falling behind, and being unable to perform necessary duties, can result in potential harm. An additional ethics worry is that Emily was so busy that she missed rounds with the medical team. This means Emily did not have the ability to fully update the team about Mrs.

This represents a lost opportunity to advocate for her patient. Advocacy is an important component of the duty to promote autonomy, particularly when patients are in a position where they cannot make their own needs or wishes known, or when patients may not have all the necessary information to make informed decisions.

Ethical awareness would have helped Emily recognize that, based on her duty to promote good beneficence , to advocate for her patient autonomy , and to prevent harm non-maleficence , she has an ethical obligation address the situation that is leading to her busyness.

O experienced. This is not only a clinical problem or a possible bad outcome; this is fundamentally ethical in nature. This recognition may help Emily feel more confident in asking for help. Ethical awareness also may prompt Emily to evaluate the root cause of this issue, so that she and possibly others could avoid similar circumstances in the future. These three scenarios highlight the importance of recognizing that even routine and seemingly mundane nursing actions can have major implications for patients.

As noted, nurses have professional goals and related ethical obligations that should guide nursing practice.

However, routine practice actions may not always be viewed through this lens.