Many are not aware of the fact that the issue of business ethics is a happening and on the rise topic these days. This could be because we do not see headlines of business corruption or scandals on the local media that often. However, the former so-called boring subject of studies has become a major and important interest recently. With corporate scandals and multibillion dollar bankruptcies on headlines for more than a year and giant companies that were once considered as successful such as Enron and Worldcom on litigation, making business ethics a matter that have to be looked upon to in detail.

In the case of Enron Corp for example, they have failed to follow the basic principles of accounting for the sake to provide a false healthy view of profit generation in their organization. They had been using inappropriate accounting techniques to an elaborate use of special purpose entities to hide liabilities through off-balance-sheet accounting. This is indeed only one of their schemes. There were more that were obviously misleading and clearly providing only up to their own benefit and not the stakeholders.

On the surface, this topic could be view as universal at first; nevertheless there are still conflicting ideas of what should govern the solution to all business problems. There are parties that states although that the studies of business ethics is undeniably effective and relevant, the business and the internal control should be more focus on the what drives the business and understands it, in order to overcome many business conflicts and problem. In one way or the other, this should not be the issue because business ethics clearly states as an ongoing subject and deals with conduct directly. It is not merely a proxy of guidelines. It has its own grounds and value.

Besides further explaining the importance of business ethics in business organization, it is crucial to confine clearly and state the advantages of business ethics and how it works to combat many business problems. Thus, building the fact that business ethics should be the main tool in reducing company frauds and to restore the confidence of the public.

One issue that could be closely related to business ethics is fraud. The result to the research in the United States by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) in 1996 and 2002 shows that the estimated losses from fraud and abuse to be 6 percent of annual revenue, approximately about $600 billion. This figure may have increased over the years until today. The truth is that the actual figure of the loss is difficult to quantify due to reasons such as not all frauds are detected and even if it is, not all are reported. There are many other reasons that contribute to this problem. It is believe that fraud is a hazardous problem that occurs in all firms without exception, whether it is direct or indirect. Fraud is indeed an inevitable constantly occurring problem. Fraud is a matter of moral issues, and it can resolve to business ethics for solutions. Hall (2004) stated that:

Fraud denotes a false representation of a material fact made by one party to another party with the intent to deceive and induce the other party to justifiably rely on the fact to his or her detriment. Fraud in the business environment has a more specialized meaning. It is an intentional deception, misappropriation of a company's assets, or manipulation of its financial data to the advantage of the perpetrator. In the accounting literature, fraud is also commonly known as white-collar crime, defalcation, embezzlement, and irregularities. (p. 126)

The most substantial issue here is the relationship between fraud and business ethics. There are claims that stated frauds are of nature and occur nonetheless with or without the existence of business ethics dues to many enduring external factors. These factors are described as opportunities which place a person in a situation that enables them to commit the intended fraud. These opportunities too are of external in nature. Likewise, meaning to say that fraud is something that is out of a person's control and anyone could have done it. However, come to the main concern that fraudulent activities and business ethics are of close relation because both have dealings with moral aspects. Also, moral aspects is part of the build of a person's personal characteristics and in one way or the other, effects how deep a person could be dragged down through situational pressure that may be caused by the external factors mentioned before.

The bottom line is that business ethics initially outline the best of an individual personal integrity as well as ways to overcome business related pressures and influential opportunities. As suggested by Witzel (2002), “That the virtuous businessman was a virtuous man in general.” (p. 4). From his words, it can be extracted that a person who has good grip of business ethics and cautiously monitors his conduct to ensure his own integrity is most unlikely to be committing frauds. Indeed, business ethics may not be able to eliminate thoroughly the issue of fraud. Rather, it is the key feature as a set of control for reducing fraudulent activities in an organization.

Business ethics may have deals with a lot of other matter besides frauds and another importance of it is in its potential in restoring back the confidence of the public. Public confidence is a crucial matter and essential element in the existence of many firms. It is the survival factor of firms and without or lacking of it could cause catastrophe in any business entities.

One factor that has the tendency to erode the confidence of the public is internal conflict. Four main ethical conflicts confront leaders and managers in business as stated in a journal titled why discuss international business ethics? (2001) are:

Conflict of interest: an individual may be able to achieve personal gain from a decision he or she makes. Loyalty versus truth: an individual must decide between loyalty to the company and truthfulness in business relationships. Honesty and integrity: an individual must decide whether to be honest or lie, and whether to take responsibility for decisions and actions or blame someone else. Whistle-blowing: an individual must decide whether to tell others (media or government authorities) about the unethical behavior of the company or institution. (p. 40)

A company with a lot of internal conflict of interest will definitely affect the confidence of the people towards the company itself. Because of the term used is "official duty", the issue of business ethics is able to come into the whole picture. Business ethics deals directly with misconduct in the company and it is usually of the misuse of official rights in the company as well as irresponsible actions taken by the officials themselves. For example, you work for government and use your official position to secure a contract for a private consulting company you own. Another instance is using your government position to get a summer job for your daughter. Thus to say that conflict of interest is in direct relationship to the issue of public confidence and business ethics.

Some parties do question how business ethics could promote public confidence by saying that the matter of people's confidence is very much related to the company's performance itself and not to what extend business ethics they have adopted. But technically, business ethics deals with good ethical behaviours and thus good for a business in overcoming conflict of interest align with the objective of restoring the confidence of the public towards the company. In other words, it is to say that the best medium in promoting and restoring confidence for a company is by properly adopting business ethics.

Business ethics is not merely a current topic since it was discussed about way back hundreds of years ago. There are parties that maintained their bias ideas with regards to business ethics. These groups of people just could not accept business ethics as a solution to any business problems due to the nature of "business" itself. Even to this day, there are parties that feel that business ethics should be looked at as oxymoron; some ideas that is expressed contradictory to what is really happening. In other words, it is to say that business ethics is dysfunctional proxy of morality per se. This is due to their claim that said all commerce involves the exploitation of mankind by mankind. This can be seen from the system that governs business itself. For an example, take capitalism for instance, which promotes free market business that uses monopolizing and manipulating as their tool to gain wealth. it is argued that business ethics itself has deviate from its own purpose, and this is because of the business itself is unethical in nature. In short, business ethics is unable to prove anything as true and fair, what more than to reduce fraud or restore the public confidence.

But, this is simply a wrong assumption. It is true that business ethics can be seen in many different dimensions but to say that business ethics is immoral because business itself is unethical is somehow a shallow conception. There is no immorality in business but rather the acts of human could change it to be immoral. Ethics is needed in controlling and well as reducing these faults, such as fraud. In addition, a person with good moral conduct and ethical in behavior will surely win the trust of other people. That is why, a company that imposes and follows a good set of business ethics is look upon to and trusted by others. Besides that, business ethics is a dynamic subject because it adapts to what is current and what is past. The issue of whether business ethics could or could not be trusted should not in the first place be questioned. However, since there were so many groups of people trying to make business ethics look bad, people should go back direct to what is basic. Business ethics is used as to maintain ethical behavior in business dealings and should not be lop-sided in any case, as in the stakeholders' case. A company, by adopting proper business ethics will surely be able to maintain the stability of their company's existence, and along the way, comply with human values in life.