Accounting Ethics
The American Institute of Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA) provides ethical guidance to its members. AICPA provides a Code of Ethics and several tools that support members’ adherence to it, including guidance, a FAQ, case studies, and a comprehensive ethics course.
It may make more sense to introduce and discuss ethics in accounting at the student level, rather than waiting until a graduate is preparing to take the professional exam.
Tara Shawver of the McGowan School of Business of King’s College in Pennsylvania is one professor urging her colleagues to introduce ethics at the undergraduate level. She evaluated a 12-week professional responsibility course for college seniors majoring in accounting. Previous attempts to incorporate ethics into undergraduate courses for accounting majors had mixed success. Shawver believes this is because accounting students are grouped with business students to learn from a curriculum that is “not sufficient in dealing with the complexities of accounting.”
Shawver studied students who completed a 12-week “capstone” course that covered key items previous writers, particularly David Callahan, highlighted as essential goals for future accountants:
- Relate accounting education to moral issues.
- Recognize issues in accounting that have ethical implications.
- Develop a “sense of moral obligation” or responsibility.
- Develop the abilities needed to deal with ethical conflicts or dilemmas.
- Learn to deal with the uncertainties of the accounting profession.
- “Set the stage for” a change in ethical behavior.
- Appreciate and understand the history and composition of all aspects of accounting ethics and their relationship to the general field of ethics.
Results of the course—among the first of its kind—were based on evaluations that measured which components were most effective in addressing these goals. Responses indicated that each component was statistically significant in increasing students’ “moral reasoning” and ability to identify unethical accounting and business actions.
Anthem College Online offers an Associate of Science degree in Accounting Technology that helps students prepare for entry-level accounting positions. For more information on the program, please visit our web site or call us at 1.866.837.1010.
Source:
Shawver, Tara J. “An Exploratory Study Assessing the Effectiveness of a Professional Responsibility Course,” Global Perspectives of Accounting Education, 2006.
