Data analysis

Silvana Arciniegas Cristo.

Accounting 2010.

Personal Ethics Reflection.

Personal ethics are important in the society, having ethics is a way of living and having an honest

life for being in peace with others with no mind charges. Personal ethics are important in all life

aspects but let’s focus on business and accounting personal ethics. Is it good to have personal

ethics? What are the benefits from it? And how to develop those personal ethics in our daily life.

Firstly, let’s talk about the fraud of triangle, it is the design of how an employee gets the desire

of committing fraud. We can divide this triangle in three parts: Pressure, Opportunity and

Rationalization.

The pressure on the individual can be defined as the situation and individual gets from home

(debts, family issues, hospital charges...etc.) or either from their own job (problems with other

employees or even with the boss).

The opportunity to commit fraud is when the worker (most frequently accountants) clearly sees

the way of defrauding the company or organization. That’s why all companies have to have

strong systems of internal control and separation of duties, that way the employees don’t have as

much opportunity as an employee working in a company with poor internal control and lack of

separation of duties.

The ability to rationalize the crime, this is the final step of this process and is when the worker

finds the way of justifying the crime, hiding the crime or see himself as a victim without feeling

guilty of what he is doing.

Secondly, having strong personal ethics is a good way to avoid all this situation or temptation

from defrauding your job. When a person has personal ethics, they see the opportunity of

committing fraud, but they don’t rationalize how to commit the crime because they clearly

understand that it is a crime and for sure it brings serious consequences that may not be

immediately consequences but anyways they will come. The benefits of being a person with

strong personal ethics is that you can earn respect, admiration and trust in your job from the

people who is above you and also the ones under your position, making you have opportunities

of having a better position or earning more money.

A good way of developing personal ethics is starting from your own home, having an honest life,

trying to don’t lie to people not even touching the money from others. Generally, setting up your

mind as a person who does not even think about having problems with others, especially with the

authority.

To conclude this reflection, I think personal ethics are really important in everyone’s life and a

person without personal ethics is simply an untreatable person who does not have as much

opportunities of growth as a person who you feel you can trust with your eyes closing and that

person would not lie to you.