Are future CPAs prepared? The status of ethics education: in the court of public opinion, ethical behavior is a key determinant of value and trust. Unfortunately, a few bad actors can taint perceptions of the performance of an entire cast.

• Author: Madison, Roland L.
• Position: The Ohio Society of CPAs Academic Perspectives

CPAs continue to earn high marks for ethics among business leaders and the public in spite of recent national accounting and auditing scandals. How is ethics being taught to the next generation of CPAs? How has the last decade shaped accounting ethics education?

A four-year research study reveals the status of ethics education in the largest colleges and universities in North America and what it means for members of The Ohio Society" of CPAs.

HOW THE CONVERSATION BEGAN

The 1998 AICPA report "CPA Vision: 2011 and Beyond" increased the emphasis on ethics education for the accounting profession. At the time, an undergraduate accounting major was exposed to 10 classroom hours of ethics education over four years, with over half of that time devoted to auditing, intermediate accounting, and introductory accounting classes.

After the Enron and Worldcom scandals, accusing fingers pointed toward:

* The SEC for their lack of supervision

* ASB for permitting accounting standards with loopholes

* An accounting firm that had not done its job properly

* The academic community for not teaching and instilling ethical values in the classroom

This final critical point provided the impetus for a study of the largest accounting programs in North America to determine the extent to which ethics was taught. Chairs of the 530 largest accountancy programs in North America were surveyed, resulting in 122 useable responses (a response rate of 23%).

The responses were divided into two institutional categories for analysis:

* Schools accredited by the Association for the Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB) versus non-AACSB accredited institutions

* Public versus private institutions

The objective was to determine if there were significant differences in attitudes towards ethics education based upon institutional categories. Where and to what extent was ethics taught in both the business and the accountancy curricula at these institutions.? Accounting program chairs were also asked whether they preferred an ethics-specific course in the curriculum versus integrating ethics in the curriculum, and their perception of the amount of time that should be devoted to ethics.

STUDY RESULTS

Based on a scale of one to five, the accounting chairs rated ethics as more important in the accountancy curriculum (4.34) than in the business core curriculum (4.16). Not surprisingly, accounting chairs in all categories would also like to devote more time to ethics education in accounting curriculum (see Table 1).

The largest institutions in North American devote more than 27...