Accounting Education and the Development of Ethical Maturity Essay

Accounting Education and the Development of Ethical Maturity - Essay Example This is where the role and inclusion of ethics education in accounting becomes important. This discussion draws on the connection between accounting education and the development of ethical maturity and suggestions to possible alternative approach to traditional accounting education are also evaluated considering the work of pioneering authors in the field. There has been substantial research on accounting education and ethical development and how one could be related to the other. In a latest release by the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), the importance of ethics education has been highlighted. Academic institutions use different methods and levels of ethics education and place varying degrees of emphases on ethics teaching when students take courses in accounting. Adkins and Radtke (2004) discuss the difference between student perceptions of business ethics and how they are fundamentally different from perception of accounting faculty members. The advantages or disa dvantages of teaching business ethics to final year accounting students have been examined by O’Leary (2008) who reports data on a class of 155 students who were given five ethical scenarios on which to make ethical decisions and the students were then subject to different methods of ethical instruction. Some weeks later, the class students were again given the original ethical scenarios and in all cases, the mean responses were more ethical after the ethical instruction when compared with scores obtained prior to the ethics education. It seems the combined effects of ethical instruction have positive impact on ethical decision making and in general, ethics education could be highly beneficial. The goals and effectiveness of business ethics have been studied effectively although there have been controversies as to how far accounting faculty members are committed to accounting ethics education and how far accounting institutions are interested in adding ethics modules in busin ess courses. Smith and Smith (2005) described the ethics presentation to accounting and business students and highlighted the fact that the major corporate failures of Enron and Worldcom as a result of questionable accounting practices led to the necessity of ethics as important in the working of business and accounting. Financial statement analysis and regulatory requirements are central to doing business and Smith and Smith described the development and assessment of one approach to presenting ethics with a computerized slide show. The show was aimed to increase students' understanding of the role of ethics in accounting and business practice and following the presentation, the students reported a better recognition of the importance of ethics in accounting and business. Education in ethics teaches student to practice actions that are morally correct and this helps student not juts in school but also later in life while they work in corporations. There are claims that accounting education fails to adequately equip students to deal with ethical issues and accounting education in general is incomplete for the overall moral development of students. Thus there is a need to add business ethics as a module in accounting education. An information paper was released by the International Accounting Education Standards Board (IAESB) in 2006 and this paper was based on a global research project on education of ethics in accounting and stimulated discussion and debate on the values of an ethics education in the accounting profession. The paper tried to answer questions on the use of ethics,