Ethics Committees and Consultants in Public Accounting Firms?

The ethical milieu of public accounting has become increasingly complex. Other professions -- law and medicine for example -- also practice in a complex ethical milieu. Research suggests that these two professions are perhaps better preparing students in their professional schools for the ethical complexities of practice. This paper briefly reviews the institutional framework of public accounting and compares it to the institutional framework of medical practice. In recent years, the medical profession's development of hospital ethics committees and use of ethics consultants provide interesting concepts that may be useful to the public accounting profession. The use of ethics committees and/or consultants by the public accounting profession might result in more ethics education within public accounting firms as well as more discussion of ethical issues by individuals in public accounting practice. Care would have to be exercised so that the appropriate public accountants, not ethics committees and/or ethics consultants, actually make decisions and establish policy.