Revisorers etiska resonemang
En studie av etiskt resonemang hos revisorer utifrån FARs yrkes-
AbstractIntroduction: It has during the latest years occurred several large business scandals both abroad and in Sweden where auditors have been involved. The need for stabile conditions and well functioning professional codes of ethics for companies, especially auditing firms have been growing during the latest years. FAR has seen it as their task to define the meaning of the Swedish term ?god revisorssed?. This is specified through FAR?s nine professional codes of ethics, which came out in a new edition in 2003. The opinions about what is considered as high moral and ethical reasoning often goes apart. In previous studies it has been shown that these opinions have been affected by different factors, such as age, gender and size of the auditing firm. With this background it is interesting to examine auditor?s ethical reasoning with help of the FAR professional codes of ethics.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine and explain auditors? ethical reasoning, and also investigate which factors that affect ethical reasoning.Method: In this study a quantitative method is used to get a broad study where general connections can be found. The data used is primary data from a survey. The survey consists of three ethical dilemmas which the respondents have to take a standpoint to and grade. The respondents also answered some general short questions about their background. The results are presented with help of mean calculations and other methods of descriptive statistics, and an interpretation of the respondents? comments.Results: From the means that have been calculated for the three dilemmas, it is possible to draw the conclusion that the auditors in this study are relatively ethical. It is not enough to only study the mean values to determine if the auditors are ethical or not. To get a fairer point of view it is better to read the comments given by the respondents. It is by these comments that it is possible to examine how the auditors reason about ethical dilemmas. The results also show that the auditors reason different about the different professional codes of ethics. In comparison with the factors: gender, age, ethical education, experience and size of the firm with ability to ethical reasoning, a statistical connection could not be found.