03591nam a2200469Ia 450000100190000000500170001900600190003600700150005500800410007002000180011103500260012903500170015503500210017203500240019303500340021703500320025103500250028303500190030803500270032703500230035403500230037703500240040003500300042404000410045404100080049505000250050310000430052824500870057126000630065830000630072150000520078450400510083652019200088754600120280758800470281965000440286665000490291065000390295994200080299895201020300699900130310899110679216150619620251024093350.0m     o  d |      cr -n---------090821s2009    enk     ob    001 0 eng d  a9780199603107  a(CKB)2560000000293316  a(EBL)3054101  a(OCoLC)714801433  a(SSID)ssj0000370238  a(PQKBManifestationID)11253006  a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000370238  a(PQKBWorkID)10375955  a(PQKB)10832651  a(StDuBDS)EDZ0000072812  a(MiAaPQ)EBC3054101  a(MiAaPQ)EBC7033912  a(Au-PeEL)EBL7033912  a(EXLCZ)992560000000293316  aMiAaPQbengerdaepncMiAaPQdMiAaPQ  aeng 4aHF5625.15b.G55 2009  aGill, Matthewq(Matthew James)dauthor10aAccountants' truthb: knowledge and ethics in the financial worldc/ Matthew Gill.  aOxford  ;aNew York, NY :bOxford University Press,c2009.  ax, 198 pages :bcharts, tables (black and white) :c24 cm.  aDescription based upon print version of record.  aIncludes bibliographical references and index.8 a Accounting is the language of business, increasingly standardized across the world through powerful global corporations: a technical skill used to reach the correct, unquestionable answer. Yet, as recent corporate scandals have shown, a whole range of financial professionals (auditors, bankers, analysts, company directors) can collectively fail to question dubious actions. How can this be possible?

To understand such failures, this book explores how accountants construct the technical knowledge they deem relevant to decision-making. In doing so, it not only offers a new way to understand deviance and scandals, but also suggests a reappraisal of accounting knowledge which has important implications for everyday commercial life.

The book is based on interviews with chartered accountants working in the largest accountancy practices in London. The interviews reveal that although accounting decisions seem clear after they have been made, the process of making them is contested and opaque. Yet accountants nonetheless tend to describe their work as if it were straightforward and technical. Accountants' Truth digs beneath the surface to explore how accountants actually construct knowledge, and draws out the implications of that process with respect to issues such as professionalism, performance, transparency, and ethics.

This important book concludes that accountants' technical discourse undermines their ethical reasoning by obscuring the ways in which accounting decisions must be thought through in practice. Accountants with particular ethical perspectives more readily understand and construct particular types of knowledge, so the two issues of knowledge and of ethics are inseparable. Increasingly technical accounting rules can therefore counterproductive. Instead, our best approach to avoiding future scandals is to redefine and reinvigorate professional ethics in the financial world.   aEnglish  aDescription based on print version record. 0aAccountantsxProfessional ethics926307 0aAccountingxMoral and ethical aspects926308 0aAccountingxDecision making926309  2lcc  00102lcc4070aTBSbTBSc26d2011-11-17l0oHF5625.15 GILpB05700r2017-08-25t1w2023-03-05y1  c848d848