Question

Why are professional ethics important acca?

Answer 1

Professional ethics are important for several reasons.

First, most professionals have an informational advantage over those they serve. This power asymmetry can be exploited to the advantage of the professional and thus there needs to be a corresponding sense of professional responsibility that obligates the professional to act in the client's best long term interest and, additionally, to take appropriate safeguards and to make necessary disclosures and to secure consent to protect the client and assure the professional's behavior is on the up-and-up. Professional ethics will provide the useful function of identifying these moral hazards and providing the appropriate avoidance or work-around strategies.

Second, most professional are, at some point, young and inexperienced professionals. Thus professional ethics represents a kind of collective, time-tested wisdom that is passed on to new professionals: watch out for this or do that. Also with changing laws, technologies and mores, professional standards will work to keep the profession abreast of new ethical challenges and emerging responsibilities and best practices.

Thirdly, professional ethics act as a somewhat effective countervailing power to organizational influence or the power of authority (say, from a supervisor or boss). Thus accountants have standard for reporting earnings and should not be swayed by a boss you says, in effect, "make the number work" so that we hit our earnings estimate.

Finally, insofar as professional ethics often get promulgated by professional organizations, they may play a role in enforcement and disciplinary action with respect to those who violate such standards.