Ethical principles :developing a personal decision-making model

Abstract

Throughout life, individuals will be faced with a multitude of ethical decisions. While some everyday decisions have little effect on people's lives, other larger decisions affect others in tremendous ways. Those decisions have the ability to leave a positive impact on the world, but they also have the power to bring about great destruction if the decision is made unethically. In the profession of accounting, accountants have the unique opportunity to serve others with the ability to provide accurate, reliable, and relevant information, and it is especially important that accountants conduct their profession and personal lives with integrity. For this reason, I chose to explore ethical principles as a whole to determine how they relate to the business world. By exploring the definition of ethics, the understanding of ethics through philosophy and psychology , the source of ethics through spirituality and culture, and current decision-making models that have developed , I have designed a personal decision-making model that I intend to use to help make ethically-driven decisions both inside and outside of my chosen profession.