Ethics and accounting information systems
Richard B. Dull, Lydia L. F. Schleifer · 2020
The use of technology has increased the scope of ethical situations that must be considered by accountants. This chapter discusses the roots of ethics in accounting information systems, as well as considers a subset of current technologies and explores the ethical issues surrounding those technologies. Topics considered include big data, privacy, Internet of Things, cloud computing, and blockchain. These current topics are discussed based on the ethics in technology foundation built by progressing through the hierarchy of the related prior literature of computer ethics, information technology and ethics, information systems and ethics, and finally accounting information systems/enterprise systems perspectives. Within the discussion, the authors not only include theoretical perspectives of the topics but also consider codes of ethics from related professional organizations. The chapter concludes by acknowledging that while perfection is not possible, flexibility must be included in an accounting information system to accommodate the accountant’s ethical model.