Public debate on ethics has intensified following the series of corporate failures in the recent past. All known conventional ways of priming ethical conduct have failed and can no more be relied upon to produce any fundamental change in behaviour. As noted by Ian Mitroff and Elizabeth Denton, there is no denying the fact that today’s organizations are ‘spiritually impoverished’ and therefore ethically demented. In the beginning this was not so as the Islamic and Catholic businessmen conducted their businesses ‘in the name of God.’ The phrase ‘in the name of God’ invoked ethical consciousness. However, through the wisdom or lack of it of the Jews and the Protestant businessmen, businesses came to be conducted ‘in the name of God and profit.’ Since then, the beautiful internal walls of ethics in business that were laid with cedar boards became eroded. We now await companies to find ways to integrate personal beliefs with organizational values in order to rebuild the broken ethical walls and cause desired change to occur.
While we await the goodish times to come, the accounting profession has tried to ensure ethical compliance through codes of conduct for professional accountants. Accountants have had no strain upholding the letter of the codes but, the spirit thereof has occasionally been punctuated by events directly or indirectly outside their control. This arises because social beings, with whom accountants relate in the course of their work have facetious proclivities by nature, to make and transform the world in which they live against the public interest. Consequently, it needs be emphasized that unethical practices are ubiquitous a whirlwind that blows in every profession.
I have always advocated with reference to the accounting profession, that ethical reform initiatives should directly address the inner life and character of accountants through education of the right type in order to be effective. This is premised on the belief that the capacity to behave and think right is a precondition for anyone who wants to do the right thing. The moral conviction of what is right goes beyond rules, regulations and academic intelligence. It is not sufficient to be a prize winner following a rigorous examination process and conclude that one will be ethical. There is the need to first and foremost understand who we are before a thorough understanding of our professional demands. We need morality that links individual character to proper social relationship to be and remain well-balanced professional accountants. There is, therefore, an urgent imperative to look beyond the extant codes of ethics and embrace a more proactive paradigm to create a critical mass of dedicated, knowledgeable and ethical savvy accountants. Herein lies the advocacy for Spiritual Accounting (SA).
Spiritual Accounting (SA) provides the needed window to reach the inner life and character of accountants. SA in the context of this advocacy is the “integrity of faith in God in the interpretation and application of the letter of accounting standards and pronouncements in order to align with the spirit of accounting practice.” SA espouses the alignment of the head, the heart and the will of God in accounting practice in meeting the public interest obligation of the profession.SA breeds accountants who have integrity of heart, skilfulness of hand and divine will. In fact, the spirit should always be the heart behind the figures, thereby moderating the deeds, the words and the art
of accounting practice. It is in recognition of this that the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) observe and note that the programme of professional accounting education should provide potential professional accountants with “a framework of professional values, ethics and attitudes for exercising professional judgment and for acting in an ethical manner that is in the public interest.”A culture of compliance with the ‘letter’ rather than the ‘spirit’ of accounting practice occurs when emphasis is laid on the need for compliance while ignoring value-based internal motivation for acting ethically.
SA takes the accountant from the realm of desire and intellect (rational consciousness) through the heart (psycho-spiritual consciousness) to the realm of conscience (divine consciousness) in the process of recording, classifying, summarizing transactions and interpreting the results thereof. Each of the processes has spiritual values related to them such as integrity, objectivity, love, sincerity and divine will and they are driven by spiritual sensitivity, motivation, courage and judgment. When these values and processes are firmly written and inscribed in the heart of accountants and they come in contact with any unethical situation, they would simply say: Lord, ‘I delight to do thy will.’ I perceive in my heart that a time will come, in the nearest future, that spiritual accounting practice will gain respect and influence ethical conduct of men more than the irrational call for bland, complex, sophisticated and castrated accounting standards and pronouncements that hitherto rule the accounting world. Let’s come together in a tripartite relationship (The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, the Universities and established Accounting Firms) to develop SA further and you would be surprised to see its practice hedge against unethical practices. It will certainly be a reset of the mindset of future accountants and a positive signal of a shared ethical future for the accounting profession.
Francis Iyoha
