Vol. 4, Issue 1, Part A (2022)

Public accountants have professional responsibility to their society, their clients, their fellow practitioners and also expects them honourable behaviour by the service community. Present days, these professionals are acted unethical to the standards and code of ethics particularly in underdeveloped and developed economies. It will lead to tax evasion, reduction of tax revenue, agnosticism of certified financial reports and inconsistent economic growth of the country. This paves to execute the research in order to examine the public accountants’ adherence to the professional standards and accounting ethics in selected cities of Ethiopia. The purpose of selecting cities like Kombulcha, Dessie and Wolida due to the availability of Practitioners and diversified companies. The main objective is to investigate the degree to which public accountants operating in study areas are strictly adhere to the standards of the accounting profession. To achieve the above, descriptive research design and census sampling method was adopted to collect relevant data by using questionnaires from 68 public accountants (from both authorized accountants and authorized auditors) operating within the study area. In addition, 29 tax auditors are surveyed in the selected Revenue Office to validate the data of public accountant. Results indicate the existence of professional malpractices and non-adherence to professional standards of accounting in the selected cities. Thus, the researcher suggested to exterminate by setting up of proper mechanism as monitoring, penalty and suspension of service for violation and training through over sighting body.