Sunday, July 31, 2016

Enhancing Public Trust in the Accounting Profession Using Professional Judgment



A 2004 dissertation empirically examined the impact of ethics instruction and ability on student propensity to use professional judgment in resolving accounting ethics dilemmas. The literature has supported the need for increased ethics instruction in accounting programs as a vehicle to improve ethical decision making in the accounting profession. The significance of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA; 2004) Code of Professional Conduct as the profession’s source of authority relative to ethical decision making was documented.

The Code emphasizes three trust characteristics (ability, benevolence, and integrity) identified in the literature that are important relative to enhancing public trust in the accounting profession. Ability is important to ethics instruction as it determines the extent to which students acquire a working knowledge of the provisions of the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct. The ethical norms contained in the Code’s provisions are derived from the underlying ethical decision-making characteristics inherent in the accounting profession’s organizational culture. These characteristics relate to an individual’s ethics system, ethics application perspective, moral reasoning perspective and level of moral reasoning.

The literature has supported a deontological ethics system, holistic ethics application perspective, orthodox moral reasoning perspective, and conventional level of moral reasoning as appropriate for ethical decision making in the accounting profession. All of these characteristics point to the use of professional judgment rather than personal judgment in the resolution of accounting ethics dilemmas.

According to the author, there are several avenues for future research efforts relative to increasing the use of professional judgment in present and future accounting leaders and ultimately enhancing public trust in the accounting profession. They are (a) replicating the study’s repeated measures experiment to other sample frames within the sample population, (b) extending the repeated measures experiment to other sample populations, (c) conducting a longitudinal study involving student use of professional judgment, (d) preparing and conducting repeated measures experiments that evaluate the impact of the other important trust characteristics of benevolence and integrity on student use of professional judgment, and (e) developing and testing a comprehensive model of professional judgment that incorporates all three of the important characteristics that enhance public trust.

This 100-page dissertation is available online. For more information, read, Enhancing Public Trust in the Accounting Profession Using Professional Judgment Rather Than Personal Judgment in Resolving Accounting Ethics Dilemmas, by Gene R. Sullivan submitted in April 2004 to Regent University School of Leadership Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Organizational Leadership.