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The purpose of this study is twofold: to investigate the correlation between the perception of respondent accountants (N = 164) on ethics elements and their demographic factors and to examine the gap between the expectations of employers (accountants) and the coverage of ethics in the education of professional accountants.

Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to collect the data. An analysis of the relevant documents (syllabi and codes of ethics) was conducted to generate and group appropriate items that represent ethics themes. This led to 17 themes such as integrity, conflict of interest, ethics theories and resolving ethical dilemma. Using inputs from the qualitative study and relevant literature, a questionnaire was framed for the quantitative phase of this study.

Within accounting ethics education, more emphasis and awareness is required on the themes of integrity, independence, corruption and insider trading. Four categories emerge for the ethics themes related to education in accounting: “Integrity to Accounting Profession”, “Regulatory Compliance”, “Practical Ethical Issues” and “Sense of Responsibility”. The results of this study reveal there are gaps between ethics education and accountants’ expectations. It is found that accountants perceive more virtue-related elements be put in accounting education.

This study will make accounting educators, accountants and accounting professional associations to be more aware and work together to bridge this gap as well as contribute to a more effective ethics education for accountants in Hong Kong.

End of education is character and not merely the acquisition of intellectual prowess. With Aristotle’s wisdom and the learnings from the many corporate scandals, it would be safe to conclude that education should result in nurturing hearts and character and not just the transfer of worldly knowledge. While there are many studies focusing on perceptions about ethics, ethics education of business students or academics, there are hardly any studies available on accounting professionals’ perceptions on ethics education, especially in Hong Kong. The authors found that accountants want more virtue-related ethics elements included in accounting education.

This study is an exploratory examination of cultural differences in accounting educators’ epistemological beliefs of accounting ethics education. It is motivated by a renewed global interest in accounting ethics in recent years following the reported breaches of ethical conducts by individuals from different cultures. In Pratt’s model, conceptions of teaching should be an interdependent and internally consistent trilogy of beliefs, intentions and actions. The purpose of this empirical study is to sketch an outline of how accounting ethics education is broadly understood by accounting educators from three different cultural backgrounds, the Anglo‐influenced Australian, the Chinese and the Moslem‐dominated Malaysian. It explores the cross‐cultural variations in their epistemological beliefs of what to teach, objectives to achieve, the ethics educator, and the learning process. Results suggest that Australian and Malaysian accounting educators differed significantly in their epistemological beliefs on the source of knowledge as well as the acquisition of knowledge. Interestingly, there were no significant statistical differences in the epistemological beliefs held by participants in this study concerning other issues in accounting ethics education, i.e. the delivery of ethics education, transferability, goals of ethics education, separate course, and qualification.

Ethics education in accounting has become more of an issue after the Enron collapse. The aim of the study is to evaluate the importance given to accounting ethics education in business schools in Turkey and to discuss the possible problems by comparing the results with developed countries.

For the evaluation of the ethics education in Turkey, a questionnaire was sent to all accounting departments of business schools.

In this study low rates of ethics education in Turkey were found but, if an academician has received accounting ethics education, he/she is shown to be more likely to teach ethics.

These experiences would be a good guide for Turkish academics for development of ethics education in accounting programmes of business schools.

Given the calls for increased ethics education following recent corporate collapses, this paper aims to examine the significance of ethical issues that challenge the profession and, more specifically, professional accounting bodies.

The study assesses the perceptions via an online survey of 66 professional accounting bodies worldwide in respect of ethical issues, potential causes of ethical failure and the need for ethics education.

Respondents identified a number of important challenges including conflicts of interest, earnings management and whistle‐blowing. The findings also demonstrate strong support for participation in prescribing the nature of ethics education by members of professional accounting bodies.

The results of this study are based on feedback from 41 per cent of member bodies of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC). Despite a number of follow‐up reminder notices, some regions are under‐represented in the responses to the survey distributed to the (then) 160 member bodies of IFAC. Geographic isolation and language limitations contributed to the failure to gain a higher response rate.

The findings demonstrate that professional bodies support ethics education at the pre‐ and post‐qualifying levels of education and a willingness to take an active role in promoting ethics education to their members.

By addressing member bodies' attitudes to ethics education, this paper fills a gap in prior literature that has been restricted to addressing the attitudes of academics, students and business organisations.

Accounting is a social science. Recent developments in society have necessitated new regulations in accounting and required accountants to apply these regulations. In this context, it is argued that accounting academics should revise their course material to educate students more appropriately to the current environment. After several accounting scandals in the world, especially in the USA, ethics course in business schools have become required by accounting related institutions like the American International Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the Association of Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). It is aimed to educate more ethical students by integrating ethics into accounting programs and thereby it is hoped / expected that it will be possible to reduce the level of fraud in the accounting world with more ethics educated accountants. A similar level of pressure is not seen with regard to fraud education in business schools. We argue however that even if an accountant behaves ethically, he/she should know how to behave when faced with fraud in the business environment and so needs knowledge about fraud detection, fraud prevention, fraud investigation and fraud reporting. In the business schools of USA and Europe, fraud education has started to take its deserved place in the curriculum and research centers on fraud are being opened by universities. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiner (ACFE), which is the largest nongovernmental organization in the world with 31.000 members, supports universities and accounting academicians with different facilities like courses and books. ACFE supports 295 universities where there is at least 3 credit courses under the name of fraud examination in USA. The other nongovernmental organization which supports fraud education in the accounting programs is the American Instituation of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). Turkey, IFAC member and candidate member of the European Union, tries to follow recent developments in the world of accounting. Even if there is no pressure by any institution, Caliyurt (2003) noted that 55.3% of the accounting academicians teach about ethics in their accounting courses. This study aims to determine the importance of fraud education as taught by Turkish accounting academicians to accounting students in public and private business schools. As the result it is found that 50% of the accounting academician teach about fraud in their accounting courses but, unfortunately, only 7.1 % of them had education on fraud during their personal education.

There is limited research that utilizes the consequential‐conflictual (CC) approaches, which utilized radical orientation of double loop, second order and reorientation of organizational learning strategies. Both the functional‐institutional (FI) and CC approaches are integrated with the sustainability and ecological resources management literature. The aim of this paper is to fill this research gap.

The paper applies FI and CC sociological approaches.

This paper's contribution to the managerial auditing education literature is based on the proposition that ethics education can improve the moral and ethical reasoning of auditors, when the educational processes incorporate both the FI and CC sociological organizational learning strategies. The paper suggests that ethics education in auditing could benefit from experiential teaching methods utilized in allied applied disciplines of medicine, engineering, and educational psychology.

Sociological approaches have been commonly applied in behavioral managerial accounting and control systems research. This paper extends the FI and CC framework to ethics education in managerial auditing research.

The subject of accounting ethics education is important to auditors. When accounting ethics education utilizes both the FI and CC teaching approaches, the managerial auditing education processes become interactive and cooperative by bringing experiential organizational experiences to the classroom.

Accounting ethics education is shaped by ecological and environmental sustainability concerns. Recently, business school interest and growth in sustainability management has contributed to the integration of ethics education in managerial auditing and accounting contexts, overcoming the shortcomings accounting programs experienced from stand‐alone ethics courses.

This study examines corporate governance and ethics (CGE) education by conducting a survey of academicians and practitioners in the United States. Results indicate that the demand for, and interest in, CGE continues to increase. More universities are planning to provide CGE education and many CGE topics are considered important for integration into the curriculum, although the degree of importance varies between academicians and practitioners. The two prevailing methods of CGE education integration are offering a stand-alone course in CGE or infusion of CGE topics into accounting courses. Results pertaining to the importance, delivery, and topical content of CGE education may be useful to universities that are, or are considering, integrating CGE into their curricula or redesigning their CGE courses. The CGE educational issues addressed in this study should help business schools design curricula to prepare students for the challenges awaiting them in the area of CGE.

This study examines the perceptions of accounting faculties toward ethics education, the extent of ethics coverage and reasons why ethics should (or should not) be taught in Japanese tertiary schools. Data for this research was collected from faculties that primarily teach accounting in Japanese tertiary schools in 2009. The results indicate that over 90% of accounting faculties believe that ethics should be taught within the accounting curriculum. In terms of how ethics should be delivered survey participants believed in a more holistic approach, which would encompass the benefits of teaching it as both a stand-alone course and integrating it with other relevant courses. This outcome is in direct contrast to the results obtained from previous studies undertaken outside of Japan. Of particular interest was the fact that the current survey revealed that only 55.2% of respondents actually intend to incorporate ethics into their accounting courses in the foreseeable future. This research successfully adds value to the shortage of literature existing on the perceptions of ethics education among Japanese accounting faculties.

Despite formal ethics education and ethics-related continuing professional education (CPE) requirements, professional accountants continue to play a central role in enabling corporations to make unethical business decisions and take unethical business actions. Several jurisdictions in the United States require ethics education for licensure, but often the focus is on memorizing rules and regulations, rather than on providing tools to improve the moral practice of professionals and to help them resolve ethical dilemmas. The authors analyzed recent state Certified Public Accountant (CPA) society course offerings and found much more emphasis on memorization than on ethical reasoning to satisfy State CPA CPE requirements. To improve accountants’ ethical awareness and behavior, CPE providers should stress ethical reasoning rather than merely memorizing rules. Such changes will make future and present accountants and auditors more ethically aware, and thus more likely to improve their ethical decision-making. Nonetheless, the authors suggest that effective ethics education and training should start in the classroom with help from departmental advisory councils. Ethics courses offered in accounting programs as well as those offered by CPE providers can leverage the experience of members of advisory councils to create programs that resonate with professionals and foster lifelong ethical awareness and ethical reasoning skills.