Deontological Ethics Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Deontological Ethics - Case Study Example The second ethical problem is how the external auditor would perform his function in the conduct of external audit.. Deontological framework takes a normative ethical position that judges the morality of action based on latter’s conformity to rules or rules. It is sometimes called duty-based ethics or rule-based ethics because a person is bound to ones duty (Hartman, 2004). It is differentiated with consequentialism where the rights are determined by the consequences. The primacy or importance of the rules is clear in deontological. The validity the rules would have to relate them with what is universal and rational man ought to do under the circumstances. Thus, Kant ethics which will be used in this is paper since it is deemed to under this type of ethics because of the principle of universalism (Weiss, 2008). This should be deemed accomplished as found in section 2.1. The first issue is on the interpretation of accounting rules in the preparation of the financial statements. Case facts provide in the preparation of its financial statements, that WorldCom used a liberal interpretation of accounting rules. Interpretation could of course be liberal, strict or just be neural enough to balance the two extremes. Since the company has a purpose in having a liberal interpretation which is make it appear that its profits were increasing, the company must have reason for doing so. It has done the same by writing down in one quarter earnings the cost of company expenses expected in the future so that is it would have bigger losses in the current quarter but smaller ones in the future quarters (Moberg, 2010). The idea was to show trend of constant growth in the profit of the company as a sign of growing or sustainable company. In other instance involving its acquisition of MCI, WorldCom had the accounting opportunity to reduce the book value of some MCI