Abstract
The book is a revision of prior version that was intended as a text for teaching accountingstudents about ethics, as well as a book about ethics for professional accountants. As such, thecurrent book serves a useful purpose. Educating accounting students and practicing professionalsis an important activity which should be encouraged. This organization outline is similar to theprevious edition of the book, and much of the material is the same or similar, with the primaryemphasis of the authors being directed towards instilling “virtue” ethics, as espoused by AlasdairMacIntyre, and based in turn on Platonic and Aristolian notions of ethics.The primary short-coming with the current edition of the book appears to involve the title,in which it is implied that accounting ethics had something to do with the “near collapse of theworld’s financial system”. There is effectively no evidence that a failure of accounting ethicscontributed to the financial crisis of 2008-2009. Alleging a connection between accounting ethicsand the worldwide financial crisis is misleading at best and it tends to confuse students. While it iscertainly important to encourage high standards of ethical conduct among accounting students andpracticing accounting professionals, to make unfounded assertions about linkages between failuresof accounting ethics and financial crises is tenuous at best.