An examination of the ethical reasoning of future New Zealand accounting professionals

Abstract

A high level of ethical reasoning and behaviour is integral to the professional status of accounting. The credibility of accounting professionals has been challenged with recent media exposure of fraud and misconduct cases, both overseas and within New Zealand. A concern that the accounting profession could lose its professional status has led to research in the area of moral psychology to gain information on appropriate methods for ensuring high ethical standards. This thesis examines the level of ethical reasoning of a sample of 201 accounting students, and the variables that affect their ethical reasoning. The accounting students within this study exhibited a significantly lower level of moral reasoning than in previous research concerning university students and non- university educated adults. Minority ethnic subjects exhibited lower levels of moral reasoning than New Zealand European subjects. The results suggested that cumulative ethics education can have a positive effect on the moral reasoning of students, however, some individual courses that contain ethics education may not be effective by themselves. Subjects classified as educational/career orientated, that is, individuals who work hard, enjoy learning, and have well defined goals, exhibited high levels of moral reasoning. Few subjects perceived the learning environment of the accounting programme to be intellectually stimulating and those who did exhibited low levels of moral reasoning. Female subjects exhibited higher levels of moral reasoning than males. The implications of the results with regard to the development of the accounting curriculum, codes of ethics and counselling services are discussed.