Attitudes of Accounting Students Towards Ethics and Ethics Education

The cost of unethical behaviour in both the private and public sectors is astronomical. In South Africa, the Auditor-General and accounting professional bodies have received widespread public criticism for failing to uphold their duty to protect stakeholders and the economy from the impact of these ethical failures. Such failures are exacerbated by the mismatch between the rapid advances in technology and the slow pace of regulation. The literature makes clear how crucial and complex ethics are and that effective ethics education is critical to curb unethical behaviour. The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) has charged higher education institutions with the duty of providing effective ethics education as part of accounting education. Attitudes towards a field of study show a strong correlation with academic performance and future behaviours. Consequently, negative attitudes towards ethics and ethics education carry the risk of poor engagement with content and may weaken the intended impact of the educational initiative. The objective of this study is to examine accounting students’ attitudes to ethics and ethics education through a quantitative approach. Thus, a survey was administered to accounting students at a school with SAICA accreditation. The results reveal that the participants’ interest in ethics, and their conversational engagement with it, are strong. The participants reported a high level of comfort, enjoyment, and belief in ethics education. Furthermore, the analysis revealed that the participants had a positive attitude towards ethics and ethics education, derived from the strong sense of significance and relevance they accorded to ethics.