Effects of Unethical Behavior

Effect of Unethical Behavior Article There are a few factors that can lead to unethical practices and behaviors in accounting such factors are financial pressure, opportunity, and rationalization. With proper checks and balances and accounting procedures a company can minimize the risk of unethical practices and behaviors. Unfortunately, there is no sure way to completely avoid unethical practices and behaviors. The most important element of unethical practices and behavior is opportunity for an employee to commit fraud the company has to create the opportunity for the employee to be able to succeed. (Kimmel, 2009) Greed and rationalization are the harder two to control within an organization. If the company does not have internal controls put in place to try and elude unethical behavior it is setting itself up for trouble. Some internal controls that can be used to prevent this type of behavior and remove the opportunity angle of unethical behavior are establishment of responsibility, segregation of duties, documentation procedures, and physical controls. By putting these things into effect you reduce the possibility of unethical practices and behaviors. (Kimmel, 2009) Financial pressure is another reason employees can become unethical. If an employee finds himself or herself in need of some fast cash and there are not internal controls in place to detour them they can find themselves skimming off of the top and hiding cash to get them through the rough patch in their personal life. Some of these factors can be credit card payments and personal loans that have gotten a bit carried away and now the employee may have no way of paying off such large amounts of debt. Rationalization is pretty common within unethical behavior; employees can find themselves rationalizing that they deserve this money for all of their hard work and are not fairly compensated for his or her work. Another rationalization an employee could use is the