“Accounting ethics” Sherman and Young (2007) address the issue of „creative accounting‟, in which companies make use of “aggressive accounting strategies” which are misleading and potentially damaging to shareholders, who are “left with worthless stock when a company‟s problems come to light” (Sherman and Young 2007). A particularly significant aspect of „creative accounting‟ is that, as Sherman and Young note, it is not necessarily illegal in itself; something which has encouraged managers under “tremendous pressure . . to report sales growth and meet investors‟ . . expectations” (Sherman and Young 2007) to „bend the rules‟ in this manner. If the practice is not illegal, can it at least be deemed unethical? This would, indeed, seem to be the case; even if shareholders‟ interests are not actually affected, the fact remains that companies are presenting inaccurate, deliberately limited or distorted information in order to present a strong and stable corporate image. Sherman and Young list a number of examples of „creative accounting‟, and the kind of questions which should be asked in order to expose these practices. For example, they point out that businesses have different views on what constitutes revenue or when revenue has been earned. MicroStrategy, a software company, declared revenue which it “expected to earn over multi-year consulting engagements” (Sherman and Young 2007) and when accurate revenue figures were released the company‟s share value promptly plummeted. The rapid and substantial drop was caused by the contrast between stated and actual revenue; if the company been honest about revenue in the first place, a drop would probably still have occurred but the impact would not have been so dramatic. Sherman