Ethics - Francis Vs Gowthorpe

Main Themes of Papers

Francis:

Francis mostly focuses on auditors and if he believes that they have virtue of auditor honesty which equates to independence. However, he argues that the auditing practice in itself has anti-independence factors that may suggest otherwise. These include: the appearance of financial independence, client confidentiality, and emphasis of service. The point is that all three of these can combine in such a way as to create a commercial relationship that subordinates the auditor to the needs and demands of the client.

Another theme is that he argues the selectiveness of the accounting firms are becoming minimal due to many mergers of the big players in this market. Is it really a "firm?" Or just a bunch of small offices working together for a main purpose which they share the same goal of profitability and retaining clients. The institution becomes more concerned with its own power and reproduction than actually facilitating the practices and internal goods of its members. The practice pits accounting firms against each other in which we compete for clients business and will do nearly anything to retain that client - especially if they pay us lots of money.

Our worship of money may lead to this professions downfall and we need to focus on the virtue of accounting and our obligation to serve the public instead of pure greed and economic incentive.

Gowthorpe:

Gowthorpe states that preparers of financial statements are in a position to manipulate the view of economic reality presented in those statements to interested parties. This can be achieved by two principal categories of manipulative behaviors. The first term, 'macro-manipulation' is used to describe the lobbying of regulators to persuade them to produce regulation that is more favorable to the interests of preparers. The second