Learning Objectives

The IMA Course on Ethics for Success
 with Dr. Tom Morris plus Accounting Challenges and Best Practices from Steve Player.

1. Master new diagnostic tests to spot and avoid ethical trouble in your business and learn to see the place of ethics within an overall concern for sustainable excellence.
   
   
2. Explore through a self-paced learning process the critical importance of guiding your personal and business life by a few basic universal principles for excellence and happiness in human life, and learn how these are deeply connected with a proper understanding of ethics. You will see the deep, foundational relationship between ethics and personal happiness.
   
   
3. Master the overall context within which business ethics is so important through the four foundations for ethical success and sustainable excellence: Truth, Beauty, Goodness and Unity.
   
   
4. Explore the deeper meaning of Truth, our two basic relationships to Truth and its relationship to business ethics.
   
   
5. Discover how ethics can serve a broader role of providing the best conditions for great work. Understand how aesthetics is a part of the domain of the ethical, and how it relates to excellence.
   
   
6. Ascertain more clearly the concept of goodness and the interface of personal morality and professional ethics, while gaining a deeper motivation for ethical behavior. Learn the two sides of moral Goodness and how ethics is about both about the inner person and the outer activity of any person.
   
   
7. Examine how the Golden Rule relates to the well-publicized business scandals of the recent past.
   
   
8. Master the most powerful levels of human motivation through an understanding of the spiritual dimension of work. Explore the four basic spiritual needs and best practices for creating unity in the workplace.
   
   
9. Gain a new and deeper appreciation for the relationship between ethics and excellence by exploring the two most powerful models of ethics in all of human history, and three models, or basic ways of understanding, excellence.
   
   
10. Master the four common obstacles to ethical decision-making. Learn how to use the “Ethical Point of View” to contextualize each part of life, and every action, within a broader, deeper horizon of value, within the widest possible circle of concern.
    
11. Acquire the correct logic of business ethical decision-making and how the conventional approach to ethical decision-making is vastly oversimplified.
    
    
12. Learn how to use the tool of Ethical Transparency in your workplace and how you can bring transparency to bear in your decision-making.
    
    
13. Make more reliable ethical decisions and learn why you cannot rely on only more rules to guide you and your company through today’s ethical challenges and dilemmas.
    
    
14. Equip yourself to create more rewarding partnerships in everything you do. Understand the three models of excellence and why organizational excellence is best achieved through the Collaborative Model of Partnership. Learn the keys to making your workplace “a Partnerships for Living Well."

1. Learn about current state of ethics as reported by the Ethics Research Center.
   
   
2. Master how to evaluate accounting and finance ethical dilemmas and make better ethical decisions using the seven-step American Accounting Association Decision Model.
   
   
3. Apply the Institute for Management Accounting’s Standards of Ethical Conduct in your resolution of ethical conflicts. Learn how to navigate through finance and accounting ethical dilemmas according to the standards set forth by the IMA Standards.
   
   
4. Master the major accounting and finance ethical frameworks and guidelines that all finance professionals need to know, including:

   - Professional Codes of Conduct;
   - Standards of Corporate Governance;
   - The Federal Sentencing Guidelines;
   - The Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002; and

   
   
5. Integrate the four major sections of the Sarbanes – Oxley Act of 2002 into your daily accounting and finance practice learn how they impact the accounting and finance professions, including:
   
   
6. Section 404 – Management Assessment of Internal Control;
   
   
7. Section 302 – Corporate Responsibility for Financial Reports;
   
   
8. Section 906 - Corporate Responsibility for Financial Reports(2); and
   
   
9. Section 406 - Code of Ethics for Senior Financial Managers.
   
   
10. Explore some of the more difficult problems faced by accounting and finance professionals and how these “slippery slopes” can lead to ethical ruin.
    
    
11. Learn how your traditional business practices may be undermining the intent of ethical conduct. Explore how a traditional business management processes, such as annual budgeting and the incentive compensation programs, can, and frequently do, derail ethical conduct.
    
    
12. Learn how to apply best practices to overcome ethical “slippery slopes” and pitfalls.