Ethical Principles and Scientific Research

Ethical Principles and Scientific Research

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QUESTION FOUR

Integrate knowledge of ethical practices with principles of professional practice as it applies to specific scenarios within the academic discipline and specialization.

Ethical Principles and Scientific Research

Ethics as discipline deals with two sets of questions; first, what should we do and what should we not do? Secondly, why should we do what we should do, and why should we not do what we should not do? Ethics is the study of morals (Francis, 2000). It is concerned with the purpose of determining what type of activity to do right and to be done, and what actions are bad, wrong and void. Integrating ethical principles, with Finance is necessary to enable morality in the financial activities. Ideally, application of ethical principles in financial management and operations can be referred to as corporate governance. Corporate governance is the managerial control of an organization which can reduce the risk of fraud, improve company performance, leadership and demonstrate social responsibility. It involves creating an appropriate legal, economic and institutional environment for business performance and accountability to stakeholders and the society.

Financial practices involve interaction between people, concepts, equipment, and ideologies that must co-exist to ensure sound results. However, for sound results to emerge, people responsible must act according to their financial professionalism and ethics. They are guided by ethical principles that ensure satisfaction all the stakeholders. CEOs, Financial managers, and all other finance staff must understand rational institutional concepts to ensure alignment between ethics and their conducts. Therefore, in many corporations, there is a legislative system that formulates a document of the ethical principles and that all the members must obey. The document is known as Code of Professional Conduct (Francis, 2000). The basic principles of ethics that control the practice of finance include accountability, transparency, integrity, fairness and independency, honesty, fraud, discrimination, conflict of interest, and reputation.

Accountability implies that the management must always e responsible/accountable to the higher body. Executives driven by ethics always acknowledge being responsible for the impacts of their decisions on the company performance, colleagues and all the stakeholders of the business. It is the act of being answerable for decisions and actions made whether right or wrong. In Finance, it focuses on an individual being able to account for the actions and accept punishment for illegal actions. Through accountability, a financial manager can give account for the transactions made to the stakeholders and receive punishment in case of misconduct or immoral decision.