ABSTRACT
Ethics in performance audits and evaluation is particularly important. The social and political context in which auditors and evaluators work increases their exposure to a multitude of potential ethical dilemmas and tends to undermine their independence in subtle, and sometimes not so subtle ways. Throughout their career, auditors, and evaluators will face ethical challenges that are specific to their profession.
This chapter sheds light on ethics in evaluation, internal, and performance auditing by describing the sources of ethical dilemmas, addressing the issues of conflicts of loyalty and of interests, surveying the main philosophical approaches to ethics and tracing their practical implications for ethical conduct, especially for encouraging virtue and preventing unethical behavior by auditors and evaluators.
