The post-Enron era shares an important similarity with previous time periods following high-profile ethical lapses: post-Enron, there have been clear calls for educators to increase ethics instruction provided to students majoring in accounting (e.g., Mintz 2007; National Association of State Boards of Accountancy [NASBA] 2005, 2007). Educators' response to the calls—present and past—has been generally limited and has been attributed, in large measure, to three challenges accounting educators (including us) have faced: (1) a lack of space in the curriculum, (2) inadequate instructional resources, and (3) faculty members' discomfort in teaching ethics due to a lack of formal training (Blanthorne et al. 2007; Mintz 1990). In light of the calls for educators to increase ethics instruction provided to students majoring in accounting, it is incumbent on faculty to help each other overcome these hurdles. In this paper, we endeavor to do so by drawing upon insights gleaned from the philosophy, ethics, accounting ethics, and education literatures to describe not only why, but more importantly, how we designed an accounting ethics course. Additionally, we provide an overview of our course and append our syllabus to assist faculty members who are interested in adopting (or adapting) our course. Finally, we include assessment measures that evidence the success of our course and offer concluding comments.

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This study investigates whether task information feedback (TIF) promotes 84 auditors' and accounting students' use of higher ethical reasoning, thereby increasing their tendency to consider the public interest in the resolution of ethical dilemmas. TIF is a type of feedback in which subjects are provided with guidance about the cognitive decision-making process they should use. In our experiment, subjects used higher ethical reasoning to resolve audit dilemmas after receiving TIF than they did before receiving TIF. Accordingly, our findings suggest that TIF is effective in promoting higher ethical reasoning and thus increasing the tendency of practicing and aspiring auditors to consider the public interest when resolving ethical dilemmas.

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Abstract:This study introduces Moscovici’s (1976, 1985) model of social influence to the accounting research domain, and uses an experiment to assess whether his theory explains how different types of discussion affects consensus in auditors’ ethical reasoning. Moscovici’s theory proposes three modalities of influence to describe how consensus is achieved following discussion: conformity, innovation, and normalization. Conformity describes the situation where individuals in the minority (e.g., auditors that do not accept the dominant view) accede to the majority (e.g., auditors that hold the dominant view) as a result of group discussion. Innovation describes the situation where individuals in the majority accede to the minority. Normalization describes the situation where there is reciprocal influence.We find that conformity occurs when auditors are asked to prescriptively discuss what ideally “should” be the resolution to an ethical dilemma. Normalization occurs when auditors are asked to deliberatively discuss what realistically would be the resolution to an ethical dilemma. The results of this study suggest that prescriptive discussion of an ethical dilemma encourages auditor groups to strive to find the best response to a moral dilemma if it is represented by the majority view. In contrast, deliberative discussion of an ethical dilemma may encourage the elimination of multiple viewpoints. The results of this study have important implications for understanding the social influence process that affects auditors’ ethical reasoning.