Which fraud technique involves altering financial statements to hide true business profitability?

The technique of altering financial statements to obscure a company's true profitability can indeed encompass a broad category of practices that may include creative accounting, financial manipulation, and earnings management. These terms collectively describe various methods used by businesses to present their financial performance in a way that may not accurately reflect their real economic situation.

Creative accounting involves adjusting financial records in ways that can comply with legal standards but still distort the truth. This can include practices such as inflating revenues or deferring expenses to show a more favorable financial position than exists.

Financial manipulation refers to more deliberate and potentially unethical or illegal adjustments to financial statements. This can include falsifying information or misrepresenting figures to mislead stakeholders about the profitability and financial health of an organization.

Earnings management is a technique used by companies to influence the perception of their financial performance. This often involves timing of revenue and expense recognition to smooth out earnings over different periods, giving the impression of stability and predictable growth.

Since all these techniques fundamentally aim to misrepresent or alter the perception of profitability, the answer encompasses all these practices as different facets of the same underlying issue: misrepresentation of financial health. Therefore, it's accurate to say that all these terms collectively encapsulate the overall fraud technique described in the question.