The Effect of Attending an Accounting Ethics Course on Students' Ethical Sensitivity.

摘要

The financial impact of accounting scandals has been well documented in the media over the past two decades. One suggested method to impact the accounting profession in a positive way is to educate current and future accountants in ethical perception, reasoning, and behavior and virtues. With the increasing complexity of the ethical dilemmas faced by accountants and the already established research on the importance of moral judgment one remaining problem is to investigate the effectiveness of an accounting ethics course treatment on students' ethical sensitivity. This quasi-experimental study measured the effects of an educational intervention on undergraduate students' ethical sensitivity as compared to a control group. The intervention was a stand-alone accounting ethics course based on Adam Smith's moral philosophy. The population examined in this research was undergraduate accounting students at a private religious-based university. An examination of ethical sensitivity was the focus of this research. Being ethically sensitive allows the accountant to recognize ethical situations as they arise and utilize other ethical education such as moral judgment and moral courage.;Using a pretest/posttest for an intervention and control group, the comparison of the two groups' progress in ethical sensitivity from the pre- to the posttest were analyzed to assess the efficacy of the educational intervention. This research suggests that a stand-alone accounting ethics course based on Adam Smith's moral philosophy does improve ethical sensitivity in undergraduate accounting students. Analysis of ANOVA results on the pretest and posttest showed a significant increase in posttest scores for the intervention group following the treatment compared with the control group.