Financial Statements for Decision-making

Description

For this assignment, apply accounting ethical principles (integrity, objectivity, independence, and due care), as outlined by the AICPA’s Code of Professional Conduct, to the following scenarios. For each of the situations below, explain the issue(s), the principle(s) violated, and then, identify any corrective action(s) that should be taken. Be mindful that more than one issue might exist in a given scenario. The current CFO has been with the company for 15 years. During that time no material mistakes for fraud were detected on the financial statements. The CFO is sure that nothing has changed during the past year, so she signs off on the financial statements without reviewing them first, in the interest of time. Patricia is a newly hired accountant at the company. Her primary responsibilities include preparing all of the financial statements for the company; this includes the statement of cash flows. The company, which is in the transportation sector, uses the direct method to prepare its statement of cash flows. Patricia has not prepared a statement of cash flows in a long time and does not recall how to do this using the direct method. Instead, she uses the indirect method hoping that no one will notice. Roger is the accounting manager for the company. Roger recently approved the acquisition of new equipment that was very expensive, but he did not have his boss’s prior approval. Although he knows his boss will find out when looking at the financial statements, Roger asked one of the staff accountants to hide cash flow in another category. Robert is an accountant who will be retiring soon. Since time is short with the company, he’s been lax, and perhaps careless, about preparing the company’s statement of cash flows. When the statements were completed, Robert noticed that the cash figure did not match the balance sheet, so he used a plug figure to make up the difference