ACC 696 Project One Guidelines and Rubric Competencies In this project, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following competencies:

Contrast various ethical frameworks and their impacts on accounting processes and professional behaviors Apply ethical models to accounting and financial reporting situations Scenario You are an accounting associate assisting a compliance officer of a large private company. The compliance officer recently investigated concerns about accounting irregularities in journal entries posted by an accounting manager. The complaint accuses the manager of manipulating results to increase net income.

The compliance officer confirmed that the manager (who is a licensed CPA) did the following:

• Moved expenses to prepaid assets
• Changed depreciation methods
• Moved deferred revenue to standard revenue on the income statement

The accounting manager was both the preparer and reviewer of the journal entries under investigation. It was also noted during the investigation that the accounting manager receives an annual bonus tied to the financial performance of the company.

The compliance officer has asked you to prepare a draft of a report that will be used to explain and document the issue for their boss, the CFO. In addition to the CFO, the report will be provided to human resources and other non-finance executives who are unfamiliar with accounting procedures or ethical frameworks.

Directions For this project, you will submit an 800-word compliance report to present to the compliance officer about ethical standards that were not followed. Please include the following in your summary:

Describe what accounting framework violation occurred. Describe which ethical accounting frameworks could apply to this reporting situation. Provide a rationale for your decision of which ethical accounting framework applies. Explain the manager's potential motivations to depart from ethical behavior. Describe the potential consequences for the manager who committed the reporting violation. Evaluate how the manager's adjustments created an ethical reporting violation. Explain how unethical behavior should influence changes in ethical standards and models for the company. Determine ethical strategies for creating or maintaining accounting processes within the company. Analyze what ethical framework the complainant followed. Recommend actions leadership should take to make changes that will prevent this from occurring again.