Читать книгу Financial Accounting For Dummies - Maire Loughran - Страница 79

Financial accountants absolutely must maintain the highest level of ethical behavior and operate using a code of conduct. This means that financial accountants must always attempt to act in an ethical manner and do the right thing — regardless of whether doing the right thing at that particular moment is the best choice for the accountant personally.

Why is the accountant’s ethical behavior so crucial? The reports that financial accountants prepare are used by individuals to make important investment decisions that can have a mighty future effect on the users’ housing, retirement, and education options. The users of the financial reports must be given accurate, comparable financial statements so they can make educated decisions on how to invest their money.

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) is the national professional organization for all certified public accountants (CPAs). You don’t have to be a CPA or a member of the AICPA to get work as a financial accountant. However, if you think financial accounting is a career path worth exploring, keep in mind that being a CPA is a must for advancement in the field. Also, membership in the AICPA has many rewards, such as automatically informing you about new accounting standards and providing great research and educational resources.

So what exactly does the AICPA do? Through its senior technical committee, which is called the Auditing Standards Board (ASB), the AICPA is responsible for establishing auditing and attestation standards for nonpublic companies in the United States. Before we move on, let me define three key terms in that explanation:

 The purpose of financial statement auditing is to gather enough evidence about a company’s documents to be able to issue an opinion on whether the documents are free of material (significant) misstatements.

 A financial accountant provides an attestation service when she issues a report on a subject that is the responsibility of another person or business. For example, a company can hire you to calculate the rate of return on the company’s investments (see Chapter 14), making sure your figures match the company’s report on the same topic.

In April 2016, to address the need for clearer attestation standards, the AICPA released the Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements (SSAE) 18, Attestation Standards: Clarification and Recodification.

 Nonpublic companies are closely held (meaning privately owned). Their stock is not traded on any open-to-the-public stock exchange. For example, if you start a corporation, you aren’t required to sell any of your shares of stock unless you want to. In contrast, a publicly traded company’s shares are available for purchase in stock exchanges, such as the American Stock Exchange, or over-the-counter markets, such as the NASDAQ.

The AICPA also enforces a code of professional conduct for its members, which governs how financial accountants perform their duties. In the next two sections, I provide more information about each key role of the AICPA. First up is an explanation of the audit and attestation standards set by the ASB.