The Ethical Acceptability of Earning Management

Many fields of accounting such as earning management need to the ethics judgment. The aim of this study was to study viewpoints of accounting students in connection with the ethics acceptance of earnings management.
This research is causal-comparative. Population of study includes all of the students in Esfahan University in 2015. Among all, 390 Person selected randomly as a sample. Data were collected by questionnaire and then they are analyzed by one sample T-test, Two-sample t-test and ANOVA.
The results showed that earnings management for the company's goals and personal goals is unethical. Also, it was showed that any amount of earnings management (low or high) is unethical. Both the earnings management at the end of period or middle of period is unethical and earnings management at the middle of period in compare with the end of period is more unethical. Also, earning management based on real condition in compare with earning management based on accounting numbers is more unethical.
The findings indicate that each type of earnings management that led to the manipulation of corporate profits and will affect on decision of users of financial statements is unethical.