Introduction
In spite of the ubiquitous presence of ethically sensitive issues and situations in their working lives, accountants seem to ignore the ethical aspects of their working lives.
Some might think that the recent emergence of ethics as a legitimate and respectable field of scholarly effort is in itself a sign of great promise and great things to come. I hope this is the case; but it will be so only if we make it so. For, it is also true that the recent upsurge in scholarly activity must be set against decades in which little ethics research was performed. At least two assessments of behavioral research opportunities in accounting have appeared in the last few years (Abdel-khalik and Solomon 1988; Bamber 1993). The fact that both omitted any discussion of ethics research makes it obvious that there is a problem of major proportions, when something so central to the practice of a profession as ethics is thus ignored. Rather than try to counterbalance the marginalization of ethics research by attempting to identify research opportunities in accounting ethics, this paper attempts to identify some fundamental problems which are internal to the research domain itself. These problems require attention now, if the field is to flourish in the future.

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This paper develops the idea that the health of accounting practice is important to society, and that scholarly activity in accounting ethics should be motivated, in part, by a desire to see accounting progress.

Ethics Research and Ethical Research
Advocates of value-neutrality might concede the important observation that many researchers in the ethics of accounting may be personally concerned about the ethical issues and problems facing practicing accountants (and also the problems caused by their actions), and that this concern may influence the choice of research projects they pursue. Beyond this, however, they would say that there is nothing distinctive in any way about research on the ethical behavior of accountants. The only thing special about behavioral research on accounting ethics is that a group of researchers happen to be committed (to varying degrees) to the importance of understanding the ethical aspects of accounting practice. But it is important to note that, according to this view, pursuit of ethics research does not require such a commitment, nor is even an interest in anything beyond a belief that “ethics” an exploitable opportunity to advance one's career. Research is research, and the only thing that brings this group together is that they have an interest in common. It is especially important to recognize, according to this view, that scientific research can be conducted perfectly well without reference to the ethical interests or commitments of the researchers. Furthermore, it can be conducted perfectly well without coping with the ethical aspects of professional accounting practice. In short, any ethical or policy consequences of research results are distinct from, and have no relation to, the conduct of research itself.

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Although explicit statements of this value-neutral view of science do not appear to have been made in the behavioral research literature, it is a commonly held belief among accounting researchers. A detailed analysis of the value-neutrality thesis is beyond the scope of this paper. However, this view is a serious mistake, a left-over from a long-rejected school of thought in the philosophy of science (Gaa 1977; Putnam 1981). The important implication is that all science is essentially an ethical enterprise. Therefore, good research is research which is good in every sense of the word.

Many researchers in accounting ethics are strongly motivated by a desire to understand in one way or another, what it means for a practicing accountant to be a good accountant and, as a corollary, how they might do their job well, where “good” and “well” are understood in the full ethical sense. But merely understanding the behavioral aspects of accounting is not enough. Continuing along Churchman's path, it is critically important, in fact it is an obligation of accounting researchers, to be concerned with implementation, i.e., with the introduction of progressive change into the practice of accounting. Sikka et al. (1995) go further than this to claim that accounting academics should recognize their position in the social-political structure, and accept a responsibility to use their expertise and privileged position to engage in public policy debates. How far individual responsibilities extend in the direction of direct political action is an important individual and social ethical issue, beyond the scope of this paper. In any case, like Churchman, we await the emergence of a science of accounting.

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The Content of Ethics Research
Research in the ethics of the accounting profession encompasses a broader range of topics than can be identified and discussed within the limits of this paper. In any case, it is critically important for researchers who wish to study the ethical issues of accounting practice to develop a thorough understanding of those issues of their own. It is a commonplace observation that we cannot understand accounting adequately without understanding the organizational, institutional and social contexts in which they exist. Likewise, we can't begin to understand the ethical issues confronting the accounting profession and the behavior of accountants unless we understand the ethical issues of the environment in which accountants live and work.
Examination of the accounting ethics literature indicates that behavioral accounting researchers as a group, as well as the academic accounting community at large, are largely ignorant of the ethical issues which arise in organizations, and of work in the fields of business and professional ethics. As long as this is the case, it is unlikely that accounting researchers will identify many of the most important ethical issues in accounting practice. It is also unlikely that they will adopt and use appropriate theoretical foundations.

For the most part, researchers in accounting ethics conduct their work in isolation from work (already done as well as being done currently) in related fields. In this way, they act as if accounting ethics were a special field of its own—that they have nothing to learn from other fields and nothing to contribute to them. Without an awareness and understanding of other fields, researchers in accounting ethics are likely to make progress at a slow and halting rate (if at all), and without linkage to work in related fields. More important, they are also unlikely to play much of a role in improving the ethical standards of the profession.

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As an example of our ignorance, consider management accounting. Management accountants are part of the management of the organizations in which they work. So, the obvious question arises: What precisely is the relationship between business ethics (more generally, the ethics of organizations) and management accounting ethics? Is the ethics of management accounting different in any significant way from business ethics? That is, there is a critical need to understand the ways in which management accounting is the same or similar to, or different from other management functions. For, unless significant differences are identified, the ethics of managerial accounting is (at most) only a special case of the field of business ethics. The apparent fact that some accountants (and other professionals) feel a conflict between professional and organizational commitments is an indication that something important is going on. But what is it? Without knowing the answer, it is not clear why studying the ethical behavior of management accountants (as opposed to other types of managers) is either special or especially interesting.
How does accounting research fit into the picture painted by business ethicists? Several observations may be made: (1) many accounting researchers (including behavioral researchers) do not demonstrate much awareness or interest in the larger domain in which accountants work; (2) many of the issues of accounting ethics are really instances of more generic business, organizational or public policy issues; (3) there are many issues about which we know little, and many (though not all) of the issues which have been recognized have been re-invented.

Work in Neighboring Fields
The current poverty of the conceptual base underlying accounting ethics research may be seen by examining two fairly standard textbooks in business and professional ethics. Such an examination reveals a richness of ethical issues that has been largely ignored by accounting ethics researchers to date.

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The first book is a textbook on professional ethics (Bayles 1989). Although it focuses on the ethical concepts and principles underlying medicine and law, the book provides a solid background and perspective from which to view the accounting profession. Notice that it is organized around the idea of the ethical obligations of professionals. Even a cursory look at the table of contents reveals several important issues that have been largely overlooked in the accounting literature.
For example, Chapter 3 concerns the availability of services. Although there is some disagreement about the precise facts, public accounting firms are increasingly careful about which organizations they accept (and retain) as audit clients. Both current and potential clients are being rejected because they present more risk to accounting firms than the firms wish to be exposed to. This situation clearly presents an issue about the availability of services, since many enterprises have a contractual or regulatory requirement to have an audit performed. The problem of not providing (or of withdrawing) professional services to clients who are needy in some way has been an important ethical issue for many years in medicine and law, and is discussed in their codes of professional conduct. However, it apparently has not been discussed in public accounting.

An important issue concerning the availability of services which Bayles addresses is whether a professional is free or even obligated to provide services to immoral clients, such as organized-crime-dominated organizations or blatant polluters. Neither practicing public accountants nor academics appear to have given much thought to any of the ethical issues relating to the availability of services. Indeed, anecdotal evidence indicates that many (if not most) practitioners and researchers think about these issues in economic terms, i.e., their clients' ability to pay and the degree of audit risk to which the engagement exposes them. Evidently, more discussion of these issues in normative terms, and empirical study of the issues surrounding the provision of services, is required.

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Another example of a neglected issue is discussed in Chapter 4. The obligations of public accountants to their clients have been much discussed and researched. However, little has been said about the obligations of clients. This is the case (and is especially puzzling) even though the financial management of business and not-for-profit enterprises have obvious financial reporting responsibilities and, in fact, are themselves often professional accountants and members of the same professional organization as their auditors. For anyone concerned with the ethical status of accounting practice, this issue is ripe for both theoretical and empirical research.
More examples of work which have not been recognized in accounting ethics are contained in a standard business ethics text (Beauchamp and Bowie 1993). The concept of corporate stakeholders has been prominent in the business ethics literature for the last ten years or so, and is one of the most-discussed concepts in business ethics currently (Beauchamp and Bowie 1993, Chap. 2). It seems to be edging its way into the accounting literature and in fact threatens to become the latest buzzword in accounting ethics. However, it appears that few accounting researchers have read the basic theoretical literature relating to stakeholder theory, and so do not understand the concept as it has developed, what issues it was developed to address, its strengths and weaknesses (including whether stakeholder theory is a theory) and finally, of course, how it might be used appropriately in accounting research.

The term “stakeholder” has an intuitive and common-sense meaning, referring roughly to individuals and groups who have some kind of interest or claim in something else. As such, it appears to be relatively unproblematic, and appears to be understood as such among the growing number of accountants who have begun to adopt it in their work. It may be surprising to discover that, as is the case with many concepts, its precise meaning is open to debate. Rather than uncritically adopting an attractive piece of verbiage, accountants must be aware of the literature and debates concerning the stakeholder concept, if they want their work to connect with the debates and research which is currently being conducted in business ethics.

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The stakeholder concept exists within the specific context of an important debate on the social responsibilities of business. That is, it was developed as a way of addressing the issue of what responsibilities corporations have to the society in which they exist, and to the members of that society. A narrow interpretation of these responsibilities was popularized in 1971 by Milton Friedman (reprinted in Beauchamp and Bowie 1993), to the effect that corporations (and their managers) are obliged to act solely as agents of the corporations' owners, and are limited in pursuing the owners' goals only by the constraints of law. Both broader and narrower alternatives to this have been advanced both before and since. The stakeholder concept was developed in the mid-1980s (Freeman 1994) as part of an effort to argue for a broader view than Friedman's. Since its use, and ongoing debates concerning it, have taken place in the context of this important debate, precisely how the concept is applicable to the field of accounting has not been examined.

The basic definition of “stakeholder” is offered by Evan and Freeman (Beauchamp and Bowie 1993, 79):
Corporations have stakeholders, that is, groups and
Individuals who benefit from or are harmed by and whose
Rights are violated or respected by, corporate actions.
Several things should be noticed about this definition. First, it uses explicitly ethical language (i.e., benefits and harms, rights) to describe how corporations may affect others, such that they have a claim on the corporation. That is, it has (and is intended to have) normative content.

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Second, in keeping with the problem of corporate social responsibility, the above definition states that corporations have stakeholders. It may be that the concept can be extended so that individuals and non-corporate groups have stakeholders, but the theoretical foundations for this have not been developed. Without doing so, it is not clearly legitimate to claim, for example, that professional associations of accountants or the accounting profession have stakeholders. The important point is that one must understand the basic literature before one can use the stakeholder concept appropriately in accounting ethics.

The third observation to make about this definition is that it is silent on which stakeholders are. Both narrow and wide interpretations have been offered. According to the narrow definition, stakeholders are only those individuals and groups “who are vital to the survival and success of the corporation.” This is taken to be confined to a corporation's owners, employees, suppliers, customers, local community and management (Beauchamp and Bowie 1993, 79). A much broader concept would include “any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the corporation.” (Beauchamp and Bowie 1993, 79)

A number of issues relating to the stakeholder concept are still unresolved. The most important of these are how far the class of stakeholders extends, and which groups within the general class of stakeholders (e.g., stockholders) have priority over the interests of other stakeholders (e.g., employees or customers). For recent work in stake-holder theory, see Boatright (1994), Donaldson and Dunfee (1994), Donaldson and Preston (1995), Freeman (1994), Goodpaster and Halloran (1994), Langtry (1994) and Wicks et al. (1994).

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Conclusion
Researchers in accounting ethics have had difficulty in dealing with the substantive ethical issues facing accounting practice. This difficulty arises primarily from the fact that we don't know enough about the ethical issues that underlay and surround them. In the general domain of business and professional ethics, accounting ethics is very much a latecomer. Although there is much diversity, uncertainty and conflict in business and professional ethics, there is fairly general agreement within business and professional ethics about what the basic issues are and how they may be categorized. There is, of course, much controversy about what the most important issues and problems are, and what their solutions might be.

Without a better understanding of the work already done in these fields, the best case scenario for accounting ethics is that there will be much re-inventing of the wheel before real progress is made in addressing the important ethical issues of practice (as opposed to the artificial problems raised within the research domain).