Ethical Computing Issues for Auditors

Overview
- Ethics: Evaluation of human conduct - from Philosophical Dictionary.
- A way of life instead of a checkpoint.
- Ethical relativism.
- Personal and professional ethics.
- Focus on computer related ethics instead of general accounting ethics.
- Ethics isn't always a case of Right versus Wrong. It's often a case of Right versus Right.
- Humans are just people.
- Taking responsibility is an ethical behavior.
- The Golden Rule.
PAPA - Privacy, Accuracy, Property, and Accessibility from Richard Mason
- Privacy
  - "Browsing"
  - Employee monitoring - more later
- Accuracy
  - Pentium bug of 1994
  - Software tools - not all are equal
- Property - Intellectual property
  - Web pages
  - Processes
  - Ownership and control (for example, E-mail)
- Accessibility
  - Security
  - Public access laws
Computers are tools, not decision makers
- Trends in intelligent computer programs
- Decision support as opposed to decision making
Employee monitoring
Personal Use, particularly communication
Artificial intelligence in auditing
Perception versus reality
The line between legal and ethical behavior
- Rounding error - computer limitation or fraud
- "Borrowing" Web pages
- When do human errors become computer malpractice?
War stories

Research on Accounting Ethics: 1999 by Lawrence Poneman (JAI Press), 1999.
Computer Ethics by Deborah Johnson (Prentice-Hall), 1994.

Four Ethical Issues in the Information Age by Richard Mason in Management Information Systems Quarterly (Volume 10, number 1), March, 1986. Caution: PDF document.

Codes of Ethics

AITP - was Data Processing Mangement Association

Tennessee Society of Certified Public Accountants ???