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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.

Outlines the role of the Uniform Accountancy Act published jointly by the National Association of Accountancy and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountancy, showing it is a vehicle to align state accountancy laws. Discusses the need to do this as travel and communication makes clients easily accessible from any area. Covers the perceived benefits and looks at the barriers to implementation. Reports the results of a survey of State Board of Accountancy Members and the State Society of CPA officers about the proposals. Looks at the concerns expressed and concludes that the main principles are supported but there are areas which need to be addressed before these regulations would be adopted by all states.

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the academic research related to the certified public accountant (CPA) exam. Our review identifies several research streams in this area, including studies that examine the effects of educational requirements and institutional and candidate characteristics on CPA exam success. In addition, we describe the CPA licensure regulatory landscape and show a general trend of lessening educational requirements among the jurisdictions over the past two decades. In the meantime, the governing bodies of CPA licensure are beginning the CPA Evolution project, a project that entails evolving licensure requirements, including the CPA exam, to meet the demands of a constantly changing business environment. We call on the CPA licensure regulators to align their jurisdictions’ educational requirements to best serve the CPA Evolution project. Lastly, we provide suggestions for future research that would assist accounting regulators, academic administrators, and practitioners during this transformative period.

This study examines the factors that influence a private institution student’s plan to sit for the CPA exam soon after the undergraduate program versus after a master’s program or never. The author examines the CPA exam factors: exam, cost, support, and career, noted by Coe (2016), and extend CPA exam literature through the examination of exam fees and review course material costs, rather than the composite CPA exam cost. From a survey of 63 accounting seniors, the author finds having 150 credit hours does not increase the likelihood of a plan to sit for the CPA exam soon after the undergraduate program. This result is different from studies that showed 150 credit hours is a barrier to taking the CPA exam. Consistent with studies that used the composite CPA exam cost, the author finds that perception of review course material as expensive negatively affects the likelihood of sitting for the CPA exam soon after the undergraduate program. The perception of exam fees as expensive positively affects the likelihood of sitting for the CPA exam soon after the undergraduate program. This result differs from studies that used the composite CPA exam cost.

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) has established 150 semester hours as the minimum education requirement to qualify to take the CPA examination. This educational requirement is generally believed to impose additional potential costs on students, academic accounting departments, public accounting firms, and audit clients. Since a goal of the 150‐hour rule is to improve the overall quality of work performed by CPAs, it is worthwhile to examine whether an association exists between the number of semester hours of education and performance on the CPA exam. After controlling for SAT scores (verbal and quantitative), accounting credit hours, and enrollment in CPA coaching courses, this study found that first‐time candidates, on a national basis, having a minimum of 150‐semester hours of education performed better on the CPA exam. We interpret these results as indicating that there are benefits to students, CPA firms, and their audit clients from the higher education standard.

Puerto Rico (PR) is among the US jurisdictions with the lowest passing rates on the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) exam (National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA), 2016, 2017). No prior studies have addressed this issue. To fill this gap, the authors conducted a survey among candidates to examine the factors perceived as challenges on the exam. The authors also studied the relationship between respondents’ individual, educational, and CPA exam-related characteristics and the likelihood of success on the exam. Results reveal there are three factors perceived by respondents as their main challenges: level of technical difficulty, cost of the exam, and not enough time to study for the exam. Additional analysis indicates that age, major Grade Point Average, weekly study hours, and the time interval between graduation and the first attempt at the exam are significant factors that affect the passing rates on the exam. These findings suggest that a combination of individual, educational, and exam-related factors affect Puerto Rican candidates’ results on the exam. The socioeconomic background of PR may heighten the impact of such factors. Considering that the accounting profession is always adapting to the evolutionary demands of the business environment, these results may contribute to the development of adequate measures in support of Puerto Rican and other minorities with diverse backgrounds.

This chapter develops a model of professionalism via a synthesis of three extant theories from the sociology of the professions literature. Nine components or conditions of the model are used to trace the historical development of public accountancy through an Early Era from 1850 to 1929 and a Modern Era from 1930 to the mid-1980s. The conclusion is that concerted efforts over an approximate 130 year period were needed for accountancy to achieve elite professional status in the eyes of the U.S. public. The question remaining is if accountants have forgotten the history lessons on what has been required to achieve and sustain elite professional status?

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) is charged with maintaining the relevance of the Uniform CPA exam to ensure that those who pass the exam and become certified have the skills and abilities to keep pace with the ever-changing accounting profession. For students pursuing the CPA designation, passing the Uniform CPA exam, and meeting the 150-hour requirement are key factors. With the launch of the latest version of the Uniform CPA exam in 2017, the question about whether educators should adapt their existing courses to meet the new CPA exam structure and focus is up for debate. This chapter contains a review of the proposed changes to the Uniform CPA exam by the AICPA and various statistics regarding historical pass rates. Further, the chapter includes the results of a survey about whether accounting faculty plan to adjust their courses to reflect the changes to the exam and whether they feel pressure from various stakeholders to improve CPA exam pass rates for their respective institutions.

This study empirically investigates whether graduate degrees (MBA, MSA and MST) earned by candidates affect their performance on the CPA exam. By examining more than half million first-time exam sittings taken during the period 2005–2013, the authors find that candidates with a graduate degree performed better on each section of the CPA exam than those who only have an undergraduate degree. In addition, the authors find that the type of graduate degree also has an effect on the CPA exam performance. While candidates with an MBA degree generally performed better on the BEC section than those with an MSA or MST degree, those with an MSA degree performed best on the AUD and FAR sections; and those with an MST degree exceled on the REG section. This study contributes to the existing literature on the determinants of CPA exam success. In addition, this investigation provides valuable insights to candidates, academics and regulators. The findings of this chapter should be useful for academic administrators as they revise their accounting curricula to prepare for the new CPA licensure model. Furthermore, the results of this study should benefit accounting regulators in determining education requirements for future CPAs.

Leveraging lobbying theory, the authors analyze responses to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) proposal suggesting the removal of state and local governmental accounting from the content tested on the uniform certified public accountant (CPA) examination. Furthermore, the authors compare the responses to a prior exam content review to place the uniqueness of the more recent response in perspective.

The authors examine 181 comment letters obtained from the AICPA website. In addition, the relative concentration of governmental entities across the USA is studied for correlation with the response rate.

Consistent with lobbying theory, the authors find that participating governmental entities overwhelmingly argued for the retention of governmental accounting. In contrast, most other groups of respondents (accounting firms, state societies, etc.) had at least one letter that agrees with the removal of the content.

While the letter writers appear to be successful in retaining the governmental accounting content on the CPA exam, the majority of the detailed content has been placed within a specialized area on the new version of the CPA exam, expected to be deployed in 2024. This means that fewer CPA candidates will be exposed to governmental accounting than under the current regime. It has implications for governmental units seeking qualified candidates to fill their staffing needs especially as fewer universities offer governmental accounting courses.