Accountant's ethical dilemmas: Understanding underlying thought processes and contextual factors influencing accountants' behavior.

摘要

In the past several years the accounting profession has faced a great problem of ethical scandals and the loss of public trust, however the greater underlying problem is the lack of understanding how accountant's reason through ethical dilemmas (or situations) and what factors might contribute to their thinking and as a result their behavior. This has propelled researchers to delve into a deeper understanding of how the accountant's ethical decisions are influenced by the moral reasoning and contextual factors such as public and client influence, the influence of management's practices and tone, professional affiliations, code of ethics, laws, and colleague associations. This qualitative phenomenological study describes the thinking behind the accountant's behavior through understanding the influence of personal beliefs and convictions, and the social and professional factors of the organization and the tone set by the organization, code of ethics, laws, client behavior, and education related to the ethical decision making when faced with an ethical work related dilemma. Additionally, the study considers the developmental dimension to the ethical reasoning of accounting professionals at different levels/points in their career. One of the main findings of this study indicated that the cognitive (the thought process), the belief and convictions, and the sociological (contextual factors) that surround the accountant are relied upon as a unit and not as separate phenomenon. A practical implication of this study's finding provide a possible restoration of the public's trust and perception of CPAs, an expansion of the professions knowledge base on prevention of negative resolutions to ethical dilemmas, and definitions that are relevant with important characteristics of ethical dilemmas for improved detection. The study participants were heterogeneous and not considered based on demographics, one recommendation for future research might be to understand the influential factors on ethical behavior amongst African American, Hispanic American, or White American CPAs when faced with an ethical dilemma.