Ethics for District of Columbia CPAs – 4 Hours

The AICPA Code cannot anticipate every situation a CPA will meet, and it does not try to. Where no interpretation covers the circumstance, it supplies a method instead. This course for CPAs practicing in the District of Columbia is built around that method and the rules it supports.

The framework runs in stages: identify the threat, judge its significance by what a reasonable and informed third party would conclude, apply safeguards, then test whether those safeguards actually reduced the threat to an acceptable level and document what was done. All seven threat categories are set out with the Code’s own examples — adverse interest, advocacy, familiarity, management participation, self-interest, self-review, and undue influence — distinguishing what each looks like for a member in public practice from what it looks like for a member in business. Safeguards are grouped by origin: those created by the profession and by legislation, those a client puts in place, those a firm puts in place, and those an employing organization puts in place. A worked example on a contingent-fee consulting engagement and a completed framework worksheet show the method applied end to end.

Around that core, the course covers ethical dilemmas and the reasoning used to resolve them, the effect of corporate culture on individual conduct, and the enforceable rules themselves — integrity and objectivity, independence, general standards, acts discreditable, fees and remuneration, advertising, confidential information, and form of organization. Guidance on ethical conflicts that fall outside the threat categories, and on responding to noncompliance with laws and regulations, rounds it out.

Learning Objectives

After studying this course, you will be able to:

• Recognize ethical reasoning used by accountants
• Recognize the core principles within the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct
• Identify the steps within the conceptual framework approach
• Recognize the indicators of impairment of independence
• Identify ethical standards and violations