Ethics and morality;

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Ethics and Morality* William Kanaga Retired Chairman, Arthur Young & Co. Thank you, Jerry,1 and thank you all for having me. I am going to depart really from what I had intended to speak to, Raj (Rajendra P. Srivastava), when I agreed to come. I hope it won't cause heartburn for you and for the others in the crowd. Before I left for eastern Europe in early April, I had prepared some draft remarks on the question of ethics in the community and the impact on the auditing profession. Jerry Sullivan and I can remember a few days discussing the aims and objectives of the Treadway Commission and how that might impact the profession. When I came back to the United States I decided to scrap the draft that I had and to deal with a more fundamental issue, which is the ethics and morality of society in general. I have a captive audience here to share some of the impressions that I gained in eastern Europe and those countries that have emerged from communism, as well as what those observations might mean to us. For the past month-and-a-half I have had the experience—I probably should say privilege, because it is a privilege—to spend time in and get some insight into an area of the world that is going through a major transition. I spent time in Albania and then in Siberia, plus two extended stopovers in Moscow. In talking with many of the citizens of those countries, both in the public sphere, govern-ment, cultural and private positions, a common theme emerges. During the communist dictatorships, some 75 years in Russia and almost 50 years in Albania, the leadership in both of those countries attempted to eliminate any kind of moral code and substitute for any moral decision making the absolute power of dictatorship. In both, the church came under direct attack. In Albania, the dictator Hoxha, went further than those in the other countries of eastern Europe. I have spent a great deal of time in Poland, Rumania, Hungry, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria, and in my opinion, Albania was the worst of the group . The dictator Hoxha imprisoned or killed all the clergy in this country, both Christian and Moslem, and destroyed the churches and mosques throughout the country. He left a few standing and they have been returned to the church authorities, but those few that were left standing were converted either into movie houses or into indoctrination centers. When I first went to Albania early last year when the doors opened, all evidence that there had been churches had been removed. * This paper is an audio transcript of the keynote speech delivered by Bill Kanaga at the sympo-sium. 1 Jerry Golden of Ernst & Young introduced Mr. Kanaga, who served as chairman of Arthur Young from 1977 until his retirement in 1985.