I will be speaking on Moral Accounting at 11am-12:30pm ET, Friday, April 2nd. Most of my talk will be based on The MAP: Moral Accounting Principles for Moral Accounting Engagements.
The talk will take place on Zoom as part of the Egyptian Online Seminars in Business, Accounting and Economics.
I hope you can make it! Feel free to offer questions beforehand in the comments to this post, or send me an email.
UPDATE: Here are slides: MAP for MAEs Egypt Talk Final
4 replies on “Moral Accounting Seminar”
Hi Rob,
Thanks for the mail, very eye-opening work! After reading, I feel more clear why PhD in Accounting starts with “Philosophy”!
I’m curious in your view what would make a good “moral accountant”. Compared to traditional accountant, would the market/client expect high level of morality from the moral accountants themselves?
And as accounting educators, how can we better prepare students for this role?
Thanks!
I received a comment via email suggesting that many regulators and investors don’t trust auditors to handle traditional audit engagements, so who is going to trust them to handle moral engagements? Accountants do often struggle with professional ethics, but I don’t think the code of ethics for moral accounting would be all that different from traditional accounting. Diligence, neutrality, transparency/confidentiality as appropriate, and so on. (See the section on the Judgment Principle in the paper linked above for more.) Perhaps the most useful addition would be a pledge not to substitute your own moral views for those of the society in which the client operates. But otherwise an MAE is pretty much like any other CSR or internal control audit, as far as the conflicts of interest that are likely to arise.
As far as education, I agree that moral accounting is a bit more explicitly philosophical than traditional accounting, so a bit of training there might help students. But if you read the accounting classics (e.g., Sprouse, Paton, Moonitz, etc.) or the FASB/IASB conceptual frameworks, that’s pretty philosophical already!
Rob, thanks for the great presentation today on moral accounting (MA). You made compelling points about MA being within the domain of accounting and accountants. I was reminded, however, about similar discussions regarding environmental accounting (EA) from decades past. While the issues addressed by EA are relevant and critical for all societies, the questions were (a) what have those questions got to do with accounting and (b) what skills and/or training do accountants have to bring to the process? Do you see any parallels with developing MA and the evolution of EA? If so, what lessons learned from EA might apply to promoting MA effectively? Best, Danny.
All good questions, Danny. I am encouraged by the development of groups like SASB, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, and the paper Tamara Lambert mentioned of auditor ESG consulting services. Along with the current corporate focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, and increasing disenchantment with the Friedman Doctrine , I think the time is right for moral accounting to gain some traction.