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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.

This chapter examines the integration of Giving Voice to Values (GVV) into an accounting ethics course. GVV has received a great deal of interest by business educators in the past decade and, more recently, by those accounting faculty who teach accounting ethics in a standalone course or as part of another course. This chapter describes GVV assumptions and principles that are helpful for any faculty considering adopting GVV. After a brief review of different instructional approaches for teaching accounting ethics, GVV literature relating to accounting ethics is examined. The integration of GVV builds on the Kelly (2017) integration of leadership topics in an accounting ethics course and synergistically promotes moral motivation and moral character that contributes to ethical behavior. To facilitate the integration efforts, this chapter presents specific learning objectives, GVV background materials, case recommendations, and application/assessment approaches. This chapter concludes with a discussion of GVV and its possible role in assurance of learning efforts.

This chapter examines the integration of leadership topics into an accounting ethics course. Literature review, course review, student feedback. Both practitioners and educators have called for broader education of accounting students in general, and student learning of leadership and interpersonal skills in particular, to prepare students who are entering the profession. I have used the leadership topics and activities discussed in this chapter in a stand-alone ethics course in a graduate business program, but they could also be integrated into an undergraduate course. I provide details regarding course content and delivery, including a weekly schedule of accounting ethics and leadership readings, short cases, and leadership/ethics case research topics. Many of the leadership and ethics subjects in the course are expected to be addressed in the accounting workplace – exploring these topics helps better prepare students to confront future challenges. Although both practitioners and educators have called for broader education of accounting students in general, and student learning of leadership and interpersonal skills in particular, little progress has been made in this area. This chapter contributes to this area by highlighting the value of integrating leadership topics into an accounting ethics course.

Undergraduate accounting program at Umm Al-Qura University in Saudi Arabia is a unique case. The program includes 147 credit hours of which 28 credit hours are religious courses. This study aims to examine the effect of teaching these religious courses on students’ ethical perceptions and decisions.

A survey was conducted for a sample of accounting students at Umm Al-Qura University. The sample was divided into two groups; the first group includes students who did not study religious courses, while the second group includes students who study religious courses. The questionnaire contained three groups of questions that aimed to explore students’ perceptions of ethics in general, students’ perceptions of business ethics and explored their ethical attitudes regarding some accounting decisions that involve ethical dilemmas. Independent two-sample t-test and multiple regression analysis were used to determine whether the responses of the two groups were significantly different.

The findings of the study revealed that teaching religious courses led to an improvement in students’ perception of business ethics and an improvement in students’ ethical decision-making. However, the results of the independent sample t-test showed that this improvement was not significant. The results of the study also revealed that male students tend to make less ethical decisions than female students.

The findings offer an indication for those responsible for managing the accounting program at Umm Al-Qura University to start developing the program so that some of the general religious courses are replaced with specialized courses in accounting ethics that focus directly on ethical dilemmas faced by the accountant when practicing the accounting profession.

This study contributes to the current literature related to examining the effect of teaching ethics courses on the ethical perception of accounting students by focusing on accounting students in Saudi Arabia as a context that has not been examined before.

Teaching ethical decision making can be distinguished from teaching decision making in other settings by its juxtaposition of students’ affect with their intellect (Gaudine & Thorne, 2001); as Griseri (2002, p. 374) aptly points out, “effective business ethics teaching should involve a combination of…two aspects of ethical situations – their emotional and intellectual elements.” To engage students’ affect, research suggests the use of multiple teaching modalities (e.g., films, case studies, journals, and role-play) (McPhail, 2001). To develop students’ ethical intellect, research recommends using appropriate, individual-specific cognitive stimulation (Massey & Thorne, 2006). Yet, in designing courses, faculty typically preselect course teaching methods independently of the particular students who enroll in the course, often teaching their courses using methods that are consistent with their own personal learning styles (Thompson, 1997) even though those methods may not be effective for (m)any students in their classes. Nonetheless, investigating each student’s preferred learning style and tailoring the course accordingly is impractical (cf., Montgomery & Groat, 1988). Thus, as highlighted in the ethics literature (McPhail, 2001) and suggested in the education literature (Nilson, 2010a), faculty should utilize a variety of approaches to effectively teach ethics to their accounting students. To facilitate these efforts, this paper presents and evaluates various strategies accounting faculty can use to teach accounting ethics in ways that correspond to students’ varying learning preferences. As such, the strategies this paper provides can be used to create an accounting ethics course that affectively impacts and cognitively stimulates a diverse student body that, in turn, can lead to improved ethical reasoning skills.

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.

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.