How does an accountant's ethical framework influence their decision making?

Abstract

In creating this study, I wanted to provide a better understanding of the practical application of ethics in the accounting profession, an area of research that often doesn't receive the attention it deserves. This project revolved around data collected through a Qualtrics survey. In it, participants provided demographic data and answer a series of scenario based ethics questions with their anticipated actions. The goal of our research was to determine if accounting students are more likely to respond to these situations in a particular way than students from other majors. Each answer choice aligns with one of the main ethical thought processes for how to live a morally just life. That is, either virtue ethics, deontology, or consequentialism. We hypothesized that accounting students disproportionally favor Deontology as a method of making ethical decisions, given its rigid nature. As a whole, the data appeared to confirm this. If accounting students tend to gravitate towards one of these ways of thinking, firms and governing agencies may be able to focus on one particular area of an audit more thoroughly so their auditors aren't tempted to allow potentially unlawful activity under the guise of ethical thinking.