Do Ethical Rules Need to Change Over Time? A Look at Professional Codes of Ethics

Ethical rules change over time. Various accounting and other professional groups have changed their codes of ethics to meet changing circumstances and conditions. But do these ethical rules change because times have changed, or have they changed because the older codes of ethics were defective ab initio and needed to be changed to correct defects? This article discusses the reasons why some codes of ethics have changed and concludes that fewer changes would have been needed if the codes had not been defective in the first place. The author also makes some suggestions for improving existing codes of ethics