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A major impediment to the advancement of ethics research in the accounting domain is the availability of appropriate research participants. This study aims to investigate the validity of using student surrogates in accounting ethics research.

A survey instrument was administered to a sample of US accounting practitioners (Certified Public Accountants) and two student respondent groups: intermediate and advanced-level accounting students. Both personal values and ethical judgments were measured.

Significant differences were found in both the structure of personal values and ethical judgments between practitioners and accounting students. Life-stage effects play an important role in explaining these differences. Hedonistic values are seen to become less salient through the maturation process, whereas others, such as security, become increasingly important. Unexpectedly, values are found to have little direct impact on ethical judgments.

The cross-sectional nature of the research design means the impacts of maturation and experience can only be inferred. Future corroborating longitudinal studies are encouraged.

Overall, the findings suggest caution in the use of student surrogates in this research context. In particular, adequate attention ought to be given to the close matching of ages, and to the extent possible, the education level between students and the target professional population. Insights provided by the study into factors underlying the ethical decision-making process of accountants provide a basis for evaluating the capabilities of employees and can be used in education and organizational training.

This study addresses a significant gap in the prior literature by concurrently considering the interrelationships between personal values, ethical judgment and subject type in studying the suitability of student surrogates in accounting ethics research.

The purpose of this study is to propose a contemporary-specific model entitled “sustainable development model of accounting professional ethics (SDM-APE)” and empirically investigate and quantitatively prioritize its components.

The study adopts the mixed content analysis research method and integrates both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The necessary data for the initial model are extracted after examining 569 published articles related to professional ethics of accounting in Iran during 2005-2015. Then, the ethical codes are reviewed, summarized and extracted via “content analysis.” Based on the findings of this study, a sustainable accounting model is developed, which consists of four constructs, including personal, social, economic-organizational and environmental factors, with 69 components. Afterward, the model is tested through collecting questionnaires and simple random sampling by 217 academic and professional experts. Accordingly, the second-order confirmatory factor analysis in LISREL software is used.

The paper clearly demonstrates that ethics in the professional accounting are underpinned by four major constructs: personal, social, economic-organizational and environmental factors; all four mentioned constructs of the model are interconnected and affect professional ethics in accounting and maintain a proper goodness of fit. Meanwhile, social, personal, economic-organizational and environmental features reveal the greatest fit accordingly. The variable of “avoiding the misuse of organizational property and information” is the most important variable of the model. It is followed by deontology, responsibility and accountability for environment, preventing environment degradation and emission of environmental pollutants, promoting the culture of environmental conservation, standing in the second to fifth priority levels, respectively.

This paper has developed a contemporary practical model in professional accounting ethics, which is extensive and applicable to various organizations.