Review the rights and responsibilities of Certified Management Accountants:

What are some of the ethical responsibilities and obligations that management accountants have within an organization? Provide some examples. Are these responsibilities different than the obligations for financial accountants?

Whenever the roles of management and financial accountants are considered, ethical concerns always seem to arise. These concerns are often visible due to the roles that these two accounting divisions are expected to play. According to CMA (2014), the roles that these two individuals play are different and very essential in determining how an organization will fair morally. CMA (2014) notes that management accountants are more concerned with the overall decision making of the organization, which means their decisions supersedes the actions of all accountants. In such a case, the roles of a management accountant may be perceived to have a lot of influence on how the management makes overall decisions of an organization. For example, the roles of a financial accountant is concerned with creating financial statements and ensure these statements comply with the ethical standards set to show the true image of a company.

In the above case, a management accountant may have influence on how the company fairs as they are expected to disclose all information to the investors and the management regarding the contents of these financial statements. Ethics then comes into play, as an accountant has to weigh the actions of their counterparts by evaluating the truthfulness and accuracy of the statement. CMA often advises that management accountants should apply confidentiality when required, integrity, through analysis of conflicts of interests, credibility, and competence without leaning on one side of the parties involved. Management accountants are also responsible through consistently familiarizing themselves with the existing guidelines each year. CMA recommends that they should often commit about thirty hours into their individual development of the accounting practices. Two of these hours as CMA comments should be spent through familiarizing oneself to the existing ethical guidelines.