Business Case Studies,Corporate Governance & Business Ethics Case Study, Flour Corp's Business Ethics Practices: Creating Six Sigma Standards in Staying Corruption-Free

Code : GOV0022

Year : 2006

Industry : Education

Region : USA

Teaching Note: Not Available

Structured Assignment : Not Available

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Introduction: TheAmerican Institute ofCertified PublicAccountants (AICPA), one ofUS’ leading non-profit professional associations, has more than 340,000 members in public accounting,2 law, education, and government. AICPA generates 45% of its revenue frommembership fees. It promotes public awareness of CPA(Certified PublicAccountants) services, identifies trends in accounting, sets certification through uniformCPAexamination, licensing, and provides information and advice to CPAs.AICPAdisseminates its information through the Internet, conferences, forums and publications. It sets the standards for auditing and professional ethics in theUS.Alongwith the FinancialAccountingStandards Board (FASB),3 it also sets the US accounting standards.AICPAoperates throughmany technical and professional committees and task forces that dealwith numerous issues facing CPAs, their clients and the public . It also provides substantial support to accounting programs in colleges and universities that produce future CPAs.

By the turn of the 21st century, due to a series of accounting scandals in US companies like Enron and WorldCom, Federal Public Policy makers felt that AICPA’s authority to set accounting standards and their enforcement should be transferred to a government empowered body. It was opined that the government body should have more enforcement authority than a non-governmental professional association.