Search results

Accounting educators and practitioners believe that ethics instruction should be incorporated into the accounting curriculum. Methods of incorporation include integrating ethics into existing accounting courses or offering a stand-alone ethics course. There are, however, obstacles to meaningful implementation. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss how the two featured chapters in this special section provide examples of two intriguing accounting ethics courses. This chapter outlines the “who” (i.e., who should teach ethics), “what,” and “how” of teaching ethics gleaned from prior literature to lay the foundation for the current chapters and future research. Ultimately, the chapter summarizes “best practice” articles about designing a theme-based ethics course in accounting. Each course: (1) is taught by accounting faculty (i.e., who); (2) includes topics and material likely to resonate with students (i.e., what); (3) is a unique stand-alone course structured in a meaningful manner (i.e., how). Faculty and administrators should find this chapter helpful as it provides materials and guidance that speak directly to the obstacles of ethics course implementation.

The purpose of this chapter is to describe an accounting ethics course whose purpose, in part, is to short circuit the process that leads to foolish ethical decisions by professional accountants. In addressing how to make ethical decisions, the course deliberately includes processes intended to develop wisdom and to impede reflexive decisions that reflect the five fallacies of thinking. The approach described represents an active, engaging approach to increasing dialogical and dialectical reasoning in students’ pursuit of wisdom through individual selection of outside reading, engaging speakers, and the use of ethics accountability groups. The course is adaptable to large and small class settings where the professor desires extensive interaction among students, and it creates an environment designed to help students develop self-chosen principles to guide their professional lives. Students take responsibility for developing self-determined principles to guide their professional lives. Clearly identifying these principles provides students a basis for resisting ethical compromises in their careers. The course focuses students on developing wisdom and recognizing the weaknesses in a purely calculation-based moral reasoning.

The content of ethics education courses is still generally shaped around the presentation of the traditional ethical theories of Western moral philosophy, complemented by case studies and discussion of ethical decision-making models. The purpose of courses is still largely geared towards the development of skills in ethical reasoning. Yet developments in surrounding fields, from psychology to learning and leadership development, raise numerous questions about the traditional curriculum. Ethics courses need to be more responsive to psychological factors and to the social realities of workplace contexts, and cognisant of a wider spectrum of ethical concepts. The perspective of virtue ethics remains pertinent, as the broader agenda of ethics courses is to enable students to develop a personal ethical outlook. But ethics courses should also be exploring and incorporating concepts from non-Western philosophies, and incorporating developments in fields such as leadership development.

We use data from a survey of 215 experienced practicing accountants to provide their level of agreement with various content categories of accounting ethics courses. Our results indicate that top choices of content include current ethical issues, professional codes of conduct, ethical judgment and decision-making processes and models, corporate codes of ethics, whistleblower protection, record retention, and theories of ethics. The respondents also somewhat agreed that ethics courses can influence attitudes and behavior, but they were neutral on whether ethics courses can reduce instances of Enron-like fraud. We discuss the implications of these results for accounting education and research.

The chapter presents the implementation of ethics education via challenge-based learning (CBL) in three European settings. At TU Eindhoven (the Netherlands), a mandatory first-year User, Society, and Enterprise course on the ethics and history of technology offers a CBL alternative on ethics and data analytics in collaboration with internal student and research teams. The University of Lübeck (Germany) initiated the project CREATE – Challenge-based Learning for Robotics Students by Engaging Start-Ups in Technology Ethics, which enables 60 students in Robotics and Autonomous Systems to integrate ethical and societal considerations into technological development processes, in cooperation with start-ups from a local accelerator. In Spain, CBI-Fusion Point brings together 40 students from business and law (ESADE), engineering and technology (Polytechnic University of Catalonia), and design (IED Barcelona Design University) for an innovation course focused on the application of CERN-developed technologies to real-world problems. The chapter documents the process of setting up three CBL courses that engage students with grand societal topics which require the integration of ethical concerns from the design stage of technological development. The authors also reflect on the challenges of teaching ethics via CBL and the lessons they learned by delivering experiential learning activities rooted in real-life challenges and contexts marked by high epistemic uncertainty. The contribution reflects the transition to remote teaching and presents strategies employed to enhance online communication and collaboration. The chapter thus provides guidance for instructors interested in teaching ethics via CBL and recommends further lines for action and research.

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.