The Supreme Audit Institutions’ Ethics Challenges in the Contemporary Society

In a world increasingly affected by the phenomena of fraud and corruption, ethics has become a very important element in contemporary society. A series of financial scandals, such as Enron's case, have highlighted ethical deficiencies. In ensuring a stability climate at national level, the supreme audit institutions, as "public financial guards", play an extremely important role. Considering the importance of these institutions in the architectural structure of a rule of law, this article proposes to analyze the elements of ethics identified at the level of the Romanian Court of Accounts, as well as at several supreme audit institutions members of INTOSAI (International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions). It also analyzed the relationship between ethics, independence, transparency and quality control as elements of international auditing standards for the public sector, being also realized a pyramidal hierarchy of the most important criteria of professional ethics in external public audit. This pyramid is based on the main analysis of the ethics tool in the Supreme Audit Institutions, namely the ISSAI 30 INTOSAI Code of Ethics, taking also into account other elements provided in the codes of ethics and professional conduct of other supreme audit institutions. All these aspects are analyzed in the context of the phenomena of fraud and corruption, which have become a real challenge for contemporary society.