Abstract
Public accounting in the United States is generally guided by the Code of Professional Conduct of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). It has been suggested that education in understanding and accepting their ethical code would increase accountants' adherence and ethicality.
This study was designed to examine the level of consensus to AICPA ethical standards by accounting students (ethical orientation). Situation ethics provided the theoretical rationale for this study.
The data were gathered by contacting colleges in the New York Metropolitan Area who offered curriculums which were registered by the State Education Department of New York State for Certified Public Accountancy preparation. The final sampling units for this study consisted of 306 beginning accounting students and 294 advanced accounting students. Included in the secondary sampling units were both private and public colleges, secular and non-secular colleges, and American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) and non AACSB-accredited colleges. Three instruments were used to collect data for this study: a student demographic questionnaire; the Rokeach Value Survey (RVS); and a researcher-adapted questionnaire, the Index of Ethical Congruence (IEC) which measured the level of consensus to the AICPA Code of Conduct (ethical orientation).
T-tests were used to compare the levels of consensus to the Code (IEC score) between beginning and advanced accounting students, and between accounting students who had, or had not, taken a course in ethics. No significant difference in scores were found for those students who had been exposed to the Code or who had taken a course in ethics. Significant differences in IEC scores were found for those students who had attended AACSB-accredited colleges and meaningful differences for those students who had attended public colleges as compared to private colleges.
Multiple regression analyses were used to test the relationship between the ethical orientation score (IEC) and personal values measured by the RVS. No relationship between personal values measured by the RVS and ethical orientation was found by this study.
This study does not support the influence of situation on ethical orientation. The results indicate that ethical orientation is not significantly improved through exposure to the AICPA Code of Conduct in collegiate courses in accounting.
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McCarthy, I.N. Professional Ethics Code Conflict Situations: Ethical and Value Orientation of Collegiate Accounting Students. Journal of Business Ethics 16, 1467–1473 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005780402378
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005780402378