ABSTRACT
This chapter situates the study of accounting ethics within its broader political and economic context (McPhail 2015) and has two objectives. First, it provides a broad overview of some of the main ways scholars and practitioners have thought ethically about accounting. This synopsis will highlight the changing ethical focus in relation to the accounting profession’s moral responsibilities and will be constructed along crude historical lines. Second, the chapter speculates on how the ethics of accounting may develop in the future. Drawing on contemporary developments in relation to corporate responsibility for human rights, the chapter contends that we may be at a turning point in the way we think about the ethics of accounting and the function of the accounting profession in society.
