Accounting professional ethics refers to the professional code of conduct and norms that should be followed in accounting professional activities, embody accounting professional characteristics and adjust accounting professional relations.

The meaning of accounting professional ethics includes the following aspects:

1. Accounting professional ethics is a means to adjust the interest relationship of accounting professional activities. Under the condition of market economy, various economic relations in accounting professional activities are becoming more and more complicated, and the essence of these economic relations is economic interest relations. In the construction of China's socialist market economy, the interests of various economic entities often conflict with the interests of the state and the public. Accounting professional ethics can cooperate with the national legal system, adjust the economic interests in professional relations and maintain the normal economic order. Accounting professional ethics allows individuals and economic subjects to obtain legitimate self-interests, but opposes obtaining illegal interests by harming the public interests of the state and society.

2. Accounting professional ethics is relatively stable. Accounting is a practical economic discipline, which serves to strengthen management, improve economic benefits, standardize market economic order and safeguard public interests. The objectivity of market economy is expressed through the law of value. Any society or individual can only actively adapt, master and apply the objective economic law on the basis of understanding, but can't transform it, let alone violate it. In the market economy activities, the design of accounting standards, the formulation of accounting policies and the selection of accounting methods for the accounting used to confirm, measure, record and report the economic business matters of the unit must follow its internal objective economic laws and requirements. Because people are faced with objective economic laws, accounting professional ethics mainly relies on historical inheritance and economic laws to maintain its relative stability in the constant changes of social and economic relations. No social system can tolerate false accounting information, and no economic entity will allow accountants to provide or disclose their business secrets to the outside world privately. Honesty, trustworthiness, objectivity and fairness are the general requirements of accounting profession.

3. Accounting professional ethics has a wide range of sociality. Accounting professional ethics is the objective requirement of people for accounting professional behavior. Starting from the concept of fiduciary responsibility, accounting objectives determine the social responsibility of accounting. Especially with the deepening of the reform of enterprise property right system, accounting should not only provide accounting information that meets the quality requirements for government agencies, enterprise management and financial institutions, but also serve investors, creditors and the public. The quality of doctors' professional ethics affects one or several patients, and accountants, because their clients involve all aspects of society, provide accounting information as public products, which will affect the public interests of the country and society. The accounting fraud scandal of Guangsha (Yinchuan) Industrial Co., Ltd. listed on Shenzhen Stock Exchange is a typical example. Listed companies fabricated huge profits of 745 million yuan by forging purchase and sale contracts, forging export customs declarations, falsely issuing special invoices for value-added tax, forging tax exemption certificates and forging financial bills. After the accounting fraud scandal of the company was exposed, the share price fell sharply, which caused great losses to the shareholders and seriously interfered with the normal social and economic order. It can be seen that the quality of accounting information directly affects the development of social economy and the healthy operation of social economic order, and accounting professional ethics will surely be concerned by the society and have a wide range of sociality.

Second, the role of accounting professional ethics

The role of accounting professional ethics is mainly reflected in the following aspects:

1. Accounting professional ethics is an important supplement to the accounting legal system. Accounting legal system is the minimum requirement of accounting professional ethics and an important supplement to accounting legal norms, and its role is irreplaceable by other accounting legal systems. For example, the accounting law can only stipulate that accountants should not commit illegal acts, and should not put forward specific requirements on how to love their jobs, improve their skills and strengthen their services. However, if accountants lack the enthusiasm and attitude of loving their jobs and the necessary professional skills and service awareness, it will be difficult to ensure that accounting information meets the true and complete legal requirements. Obviously, accounting professional ethics can play an important auxiliary and supplementary role in this respect.

2. Accounting professional ethics is the basis of standardizing accounting behavior. Motivation is the forerunner of behavior, and what kind of motivation leads to what kind of behavior. Accounting behavior is dominated by inner beliefs, and the good and evil of beliefs will lead to the right and wrong of behavior. Accounting professional ethics puts forward corresponding requirements for accounting behavior motivation, such as honesty and trustworthiness, objectivity and fairness. Guide, persuade and restrain accountants to establish correct professional concepts and follow the requirements of professional ethics, so as to achieve the purpose of standardizing accounting behavior.

3. Accounting professional ethics is an important guarantee to achieve accounting objectives. From the perspective of accounting professional relationship, the goal of accounting is to provide useful accounting information for all clients in accounting professional relationship. Whether the relevant and reliable accounting information can be provided to these customers in time depends on whether the accounting professionals can strictly implement the professional code of conduct. If accounting professionals intentionally or unintentionally provide insufficient and unreliable accounting information, it will seriously deviate from accounting objectives, cause serious distortion of accounting information, make clients make mistakes in decision-making, and even lead to social and economic disorder. Therefore, accounting professional ethics restricts the professional behavior of accountants and is an important guarantee to achieve accounting goals.

4. Accounting professional ethics is the inherent requirement for accountants to improve their own quality. With the progress and development of society, the quality requirements for accounting professionals are getting higher and higher. Accounting professional ethics is an important embodiment of the quality of accounting personnel. A high-quality accountant should love his post and improve his professional ability, which is not only the main content of accounting professional ethics, but also a reliable guarantee for accountants to follow accounting professional ethics. Advocating accounting professional ethics, strengthening accounting professional ethics education, and combining accounting professional activities to guide accounting professionals to further strengthen their self-cultivation and improve their professional ability are conducive to promoting the continuous improvement of the overall quality of accounting professionals.