Madeline Brandley

Professor Gunn

ACCT 2010

February 29, 2020

Personal Ethics and Financial Accounting

In financial accounting there are strict rules and guidelines set in place for things to go

smoothly and to eliminate fraudulent and illegal behavior. Unfortunately, these regulations don’t

always stop things from happening. But exactly do people commit these crimes? I see it as

highly unlikely that someone would intentionally go into accounting to strategically commit

fraud. In this essay, I am here to discuss and challenge the ideas based around personal ethics

and financial accounting.

Instantly when I first started the section on fraud, I thought of Wolf of Wall Street. It’s a

quite explicit movie (based on a true story) which goes into the depth of fraud. It takes you

through the storyline, step by step about the choices that are made that lead him all the way up to
served time. It displays the corrupt nature of fraud and the consequences that follow the people

who commit these types of crimes. The reason I’m bringing this up is because I feel it’s a great

representation of what probably occurs most often. Jordan Belfort starts as a young, newly

married, lower class citizen that lands a job at a small brokerage firm. As time goes on and he

develops a skill for this industry he moves up the ladder. He then branches off into his own

company, hiring friends and training them on how to sell and quite frankly, scheme. With

success comes more money began to follow. Regarding his previous low income and desire to

provide for his wife and enjoy the finer things in life, he starts to get greedy. Ethically he began

to spiral downhill, with the excess money and social popularity things like drugs, cheating, and

continued fraud rapidly became his lifestyle. After all of this it leads to an investigation which an

entire downfall of his firm and life, ending with prison. Do ethics start to go out the window

when we get a taste for expensive things and financial freedom?

In the movie its not just the main character committing fraud on his own. Its his friends

who turn into his coworkers and they all team up together. So how exactly do we prevent this

from happening in general? Things like hiring employees you feel you can trust, separating

financial duties, regulating internal controls, external monitoring (auditors), transparent

accounting records, and always checking in regularly to know exactly what is going on. It seems

quite tedious but its overall better to take these steps rather than to back track and deal with

damage control if your company was to ever face fraudulent behavior. Knowing your employees

seems to be the first and most important step to prevent this.

Overall, I think that ethics and financial accounting will always be quite the battle. We see how

much money begins to alter people and their personal ethics and what they will do when they get

ahold of it. The best companies and businesses can do to prevent it is to take the precautionary

steps and to always maintain the highest of standards. If no one can ever slip up or congregate to

commit fraud then we can completely eliminate this and make it the least of the companies’

problems. By no means do I think this is an easy task but with careful and precise approaches

there is a high possibility they can avoid most of these issues.

Bibliography:

Haley, Chris. “The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) Movie Summary and Film Synopsis.” MHM
Podcast Network, 29 Dec. 2019, www.moviehousememories.com/the-wolf-of-wall-street-
2013-movie-summary/.

Hatter, Kathryn. “How to Prevent Accounting Corruption.” Small Business - Chron.com,

Chron.com, 21 Nov. 2017, smallbusiness.chron.com/prevent-accounting-corruption-
38901.html.

O/Bannan, Isaac. “10 Steps to Avoid Business and Employee Fraud.” StackPath, 14 Sept. 2018,
www.cpapracticeadvisor.com/small-business/article/12429935/10-steps-to-avoid-business-
and-employee-fraud.