Impacts of Unethical Behavior

Impacts of Unethical Behavior

The nature of the Enron scandal all points to corporate greed. Enron misrepresented the companies financial standing in order to maintain high stock prices and the confidence of the investors. They applied and kept pressure on CEO's and even the accounting firm to keep their dirty deals a secret.

The accounting practices were not kept ethical when the executives at Enron forced them to adopt market-to-market accounting practices. These practices allowed them to hide billions in debt from failed projects and deals, and misrepresent their financial statements. The accounting practices used loopholes to alter numbers such as recognizing the charges from the special purpose entities, listed booked costs of canceled projects as assets. If I had been an accountant at Arthur Anderson, I would have quietly resigned and walked away. I say this because I know that I could not have lived with myself after stealing money from the public and the investors. I would have reported my knowledge when I had attained enough distance from the company. I am sure that people could have been killed over the amount of money and the standing of the people brought down by this scandal. There are several things that could have been done differently to prevent this scandal. First off the accounting firm of Arthur Anderson could have acted ethically and reported them himself. Another thing that should have been done to prevent this is that the government should have had their watch dogs on this. It should have been a clear sign of illegal actions when this company grew as quickly as it did. In the end, due to the actions of the accounting firm, and the CEO's from Enron the company went bankrupt. This cost the investors billions of dollars, the accounting firm their credibility, and many of the CEO's were tried and convicted of numerous charges.