Select a publicly traded company for which an Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Release (AAER) was published on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) website in the past two years.
Submit the company name to the instructor for approval. Please note that each student must research a different company.
After obtaining instructor approval, review all AAERs published during the five-year period and SEC Complaint relating to this company during the past five years, as well as information available on the company's Investor Relations website to evaluate the following items.
Prepare a 10-12 slide PowerPoint presentation (excluding title page, abstract, references page, and appendices containing financial analysis) containing detailed speaker's notes for each of these slides presenting the findings of your analysis of the AAERs and SEC Complaint.
Your presentation should discuss the following:
Explain the history of corporate accounting responsibility.
Discuss how you think that CSR has influenced social accounting.
Ethics, accounting, and legal issues involved in the AAERs and SEC Complaint.
Role of accountants in recognizing and assessing ethical issues when performing audits of financial statements, management accounting, internal auditing, and not-for-profit accounting.
Ethics standards contained in the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct.
Ethics requirements of the Board of Accountancy for the State in which you intent to pursue CPA licensure.
Current trends and events illustrating the importance of ethics in the accounting profession.