“To serve the Public Interest”, the main characteristic of Accounting Profession

Public interest is highly important to the accounting profession because, according to the profession’s code of ethics, “a label of the accountancy profession is its acceptance of the responsibility to act in the public interest"(IFAC, 2012), but there is not a common consensus on what exactly is the public interest. In this circumstance, the objective of the paper is create a conceptual framework of the public interest by taking into consideration the approaches of international and national literature and the international, european and national accounting profession representatives. The paper approach is qualitative, and for this, a literature review was conducted with the aim of analyzing the main studies in accounting research literature and the most significant points of view of accounting profession representatives. Our paper contribution is to underline some new elements, part of the accounting profession framework of public interest "to provide policymakers, regulators, and business leaders with the means to more consistently assess many of the issues which are currently in debates at the national and international levels."(IFAC, 2012)