Confidentiality of Accounting Academics: Consequences of Nonconformity

This paper examined ways by which nonconformity to confidentiality among accounting academics could lead to increased-recruitment-and-legal-costs to their employing universities in Ghana that offered accounting degree programmes. With a cross-sectional design, data collected from 1,225 accountants analysed via Cronbach's alpha, differences-between-proportions, and one-way ANOVA revealed that the impact of lack of confidentiality on increased-recruitment-and-legal-costs was not significant. The most outstanding ramification to the nonconformity problem among accounting academics was increase in expensive lawsuits against the universities. Universities must provide rules and regulations as well as incentives to ensure conformance to confidentiality by The fundamental principles of the Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants are integrity, objectivity, professional competence and due care, confidentiality, and professional behaviour (IFAC, 2010). This paper focuses on the fourth. Confidentiality is crucial in the life of every institution disregard for which could bring untold consequences to the individuals and their employers alike. Undeniably, the accounting profession, like any other, reasonably appreciates the need for its members to uphold this crucial ethical behavior and hence have listed it as one of its fundamental principles in its ethics code. The principles are not only listed by the profession, it requires every accountant, regardless of where they are engaged, and even accounting students, to live and do their work in consonance with the provisions in the code. By virtue of their work of training future accountants, those who teach accounting should be the most conforming group of accountants with respect to upholding the provisions in the code of ethics. Regrettably, however, the literature has demonstrated that some of these academics fail to conform in myriad ways. Academics' unethical behaviours such as using student assistants for personal work, sharing with colleagues confidential disclosures told to academic by a student, sharing with students confidential information about colleagues in class, using colleagues' confidential information to pursue personal interest, etc. (Robie & Kidwell, 2003; Engel & Smith, 1990; Tabachnick et al., 1991) are some of the commonest examples which are deemed to increase recruitment and legal costs for the employing institutions. The universities also experience high labour turnover on account of academics disclosing confidential information or telling lies about colleagues or publicly criticising or censuring them (Richards-Gustafson, 2013), and coercing or retaliating against other academics (Wile, 2013). It is against this backdrop that this study was conducted to examine some of the ways by which nonconformity to confidentiality among accounting academics could lead to increased recruitment and legal costs to their employing universities. The study concludes with computations of some of the probable financial costs that could be suffered by those universities whose accounting academics do not conform to the fundamental principle of confidentiality. 2. Theoretical and Conceptual Issues All professionals do have obligations, sense of responsibility and accountability towards their profession and its stakeholders. Nagy (2011) indicated that safeguarding information about an individual is a primary obligation of a psychologist. Similarly, belonging to a highly professional body, accountants have this sense of duty to the organisations in which they serve. Without a doubt, their duty extends further than themselves and their organisation to their profession and the public expects them to keep the highest ethical behaviour standards. They are responsible for their own competence and maintenance of confidentiality (Ogbonna & Ebinobowei, 2011) and other requirements of unquestionable ethical standards. From Canada to Egypt to Japan, accounting codes of ethics require accountants to conform to these principles. The fourth fundamental ethical requirement for accountants is confidentiality. The principle requires a professional accountant to respect the confidentiality of information acquired as a result of professional and business relationships and should not disclose any such information to third parties without proper and specific authority unless there is a legal or professional right or duty to disclose. Confidential

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