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Our goals were to explore the pedagogies applied by instructors that supported Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) student learning in a leadership course and the leadership behaviors BIPOC students identified as being applicable after the course.

Through survey research and qualitative data analysis, three prominent themes emerged.

High-quality, purposeful pedagogy created opportunities for students to learn. Second, a supportive, interactive community engaged students with the instructor, each other and the course material to support participation in learning. As a result, students reported experiencing big shifts, new growth and increased confidence during their leadership courses.

We discuss our findings and offer specific recommendations for leadership educators to better support BIPOC students in their leadership courses and classrooms and for further research with BIPOC students.

This case examines critical ethical accounting practice issues surrounding a request for proposal for audit services at Aviary Corporation based on a real Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement action. Audit and tax partners at Western Accounting Firm, a large international public accounting firm, used confidential information obtained from the company’s Chief Audit Officer to modify their proposal for audit services. In response to their actions, the Securities and Exchange Commission fined the auditing firm, the partners, and the Chief Audit Executive. The authors used publicly available information and adopted fictitious names to develop a teaching case that instructors can implement in a variety of accounting and ethics classes to increase students’ understanding of professional codes of conduct and independence guidance.

This study explores virtual platforms’ capabilities, particularly emphasising the influence of educational movies embedded with lifelike narratives to serve as a potent medium for immersive learning within the auditing discipline. Through this exploration, we aim to discern how cinematic depictions can educate and encapsulate the intricate dynamics of real-world auditing scenarios, thereby enriching the educational experience for budding auditors.

By employing an action research methodology, this study engaged 134 auditing students from China in an experiment, using a questionnaire to assess their grasp of auditing concepts like internal control, corporate governance, and professional ethics.

Preliminary findings underscore the efficacy of movies as pedagogical tools. These movie experiences bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and its real-world application, particularly highlighting the nuances of professional ethics and corporate governance. Results show that such a method amplifies students’ comprehension of auditor skillsets, practical complications, and ethical insight and nurtures professional scepticism about tangible audit issues.

This study illuminates a novel virtual learning approach using movies that primes students to exercise critical thinking and augments cognitive skillsets, especially when navigating ethical conundrums. The broader implication is the potential enhancement of auditing education quality in China, presenting educators with an innovative teaching modality that bolsters students’ critical analysis and cognitive development.

This study has multiple implications for auditing education policy. It underscores the imperative need for curriculum revision in contemporary auditing education. Our study can significantly change contemporary auditing education by incorporating movie-based experiential learning. Educators and institutions in China and other parts of the world explore this avenue, customising it to fit the unique requirements of their respective courses and the country’s contexts. Our study also highlights the challenges and recommendations for real-world audit simulation for auditing education. While our research highlights the promise of educational movies, it also sheds light on the potential difficulties in their integration. Audit educators need adequate support and training for effective assimilation, ensuring they leverage educational movies to maximise learning outcomes. Careful curation and selection of movies, combined with strategic planning, are paramount to this teaching method’s success. With the continual evolution of video tools, there is an opportunity for a more immersive and holistic education model, shaping the next generation of auditors.

This study offers insights into innovative strategies to imbue real-world experience into traditional curricula, ensuring relevance and applicability across diverse educational landscapes.

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.

This study aims to review the literature on non-financial information (NFI) assurance including external assurance of sustainability reports (SRA) and integrated reports (IRA). The objectives are as follows: provide an overview of academic research; understand the nature of NFI assurance engagements by organising the literature around the five key elements of an assurance engagement; develop a framework for understanding NFI assurance; and provide directions for future research.

The study undertakes a structured literature review of 179 articles published from 1999 to 2023.

The review identified 324 researchers located in 35 different countries who published 179 articles on SRA and IRA. The researchers, their locations, journals, methods, theories and themes are examined. The literature is structured around the definition of an assurance engagement including a tripartite arrangement, subject matter, a suitable criterion, sufficient appropriate evidence and a written assurance report. A framework for understanding NFI assurance is offered. Avenues for future research, structured around the five elements of an assurance engagement, are presented.

Researchers will benefit from an overview of the literature and guidance on areas for future research. Lecturers can use the findings to develop content for their auditing courses. Reporting managers will benefit from a better understanding of this new form of assurance. Regulators can use this study’s insights to better inform the development of laws and corporate governance codes mandating NFI assurance. Standard setters can use these findings to guide the emergence of the new assurance standards. Assurance practitioners may use this research to inform practice.

The findings may prove useful in addressing capture, which deters NFI assurance from enhancing disclosure credibility and fulfilling its transparency and accountability role. This is to the detriment of the wider society.

The consolidation of the literature around the five key elements of an assurance engagement is unique. The framework devised offers useful insights into the dynamics of assurance generally and NFI assurance more specifically. The study is timely given the new European Union regulations on NFI reporting and assurance and the work of the International Audit and Assurance Standards Board in developing a specialist NFI assurance standard.

Creating a mindset for research, including the development of professional research skills and critical thinking, is of the utmost importance in preparing students for the business world. To help faculty with this mindset, we discuss novel approaches for incorporating professional research and interactions into the undergraduate classroom, although the recommendations can apply to the entire curriculum. We describe three scenarios where our recommendations might apply – research/financial, tax, and accounting information system courses. Using a professional accounting research course and a financial course as examples, we start out broadly discussing a practitioner-coauthored professional case study approach that is applicable to any course, at any level. We then present a capstone undergraduate tax research course followed by an introduction of a specific project in an accounting information systems course. We include suggested syllabi, projects, and assessment rubrics throughout the discussion.

The purpose of this study is to explore how the risk of management motives for fraud can be assessed in external audits.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 26 experienced external auditors to explore their perspectives on the methods they employ to assess the risk of management motives for fraud.

The study identifies six methods external auditors can use to assess management motives for fraud. It emphasises that assessing management motives requires auditors to go beyond understanding these motives and necessitates a sceptical and analytical mindset. Auditors need to identify the accounts most vulnerable to management manipulations, observe management attitudes and assess the credibility of management assertions. The auditors in this study highlight specific accounts frequently manipulated by management. Still, manual year-end journal entries are the most vulnerable to management manipulations as they are subject to fewer controls. They recommend increasing the sample size to 100% and assigning more experienced staff, particularly, those with qualifications in fraud examination or anti-fraud training, to audit these vulnerable accounts thoroughly. They also provided examples of how auditors can identify management motives for fraud, observe management attitudes and assess the credibility of management assertions.

Audit standards (e.g. ISA 240, SAS99) lack explicit guidance on assessing management motives for fraud, but auditors are required to consider it in fraud risk assessment. This study proposes guidance recommendations to improve auditors' ability to assess this risk, which could be integrated into professional audit standards and training materials to improve auditors' professional scepticism, ability to challenge management and skills in fraud risk assessment.

Assessing the risk of management motives for fraud in external audits has received limited attention in the literature. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to address this knowledge gap.

This study aims to examine student perceptions regarding the mid-semester transition from face-to-face to online delivery in an accounting course during spring 2020.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous universities and colleges worldwide transitioned from face-to-face instruction to online delivery during spring 2020. We find some evidence in line with prior literature that COVID-19 affected student learning experience from various aspects.

Thanks in part to effective teaching techniques implemented by the instructor during the transition, including online lecture videos recorded by the instructor, online class materials, early posting of answer keys, frequent communication through emails and bonus points for watching lecture videos, students still perceived their learning outcomes positively in general.

These teaching techniques can be used to enhance student learning experience and satisfaction during class modality transitions in unforeseen circumstances, for both hybrid and online business courses.

This whistleblowing case study engages students in discussions about when and how to disclose differences of opinion on a revenue recognition matter with higher-ups in an organization. Factors to consider include the morality of whistleblowing, confidentiality obligations, the rules of conduct in the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Code, Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX), Dodd–Frank, and the US Supreme Court ruling in Digital Realty, Inc. v. Somers that addresses when to report matters to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Case questions are designed to promote students’ critical thinking skills, ethical reasoning skills, and decision-making. A flowchart of AICPA ethics rule 2.130.020 (Subordination of Judgment) provides the framework for making decisions when differences exist in financial reporting. The case provides learning objectives, implementation guidance, and teaching notes. The case was used in an accounting ethics course taught at the undergraduate senior level but can also be used in auditing, fraud examination, and advanced financial reporting courses.

This study aims to examine whether the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) by audit firms and their clients affects audit efficiency and audit quality.

This study empirically examines the abovementioned research question based on data from China for the years 2011 to 2020. It uses audit report lag as a proxy for audit efficiency and the likelihood of annual report restatement as a proxy for audit quality. It adopts the propensity score matching and the two-stage OLS regression model to address the endogeneity issue led by firms’ innate complicated functions.

The findings show that when audit firms and their clients use AI separately, there's a positive link between AI use and audit report lag. However, when audit firms and clients use AI together, there's a negative link between AI use and audit report delays that enhance overall audit efficiency. Next, the authors observe a negative link between AI use and the likelihood of a restatement. Finally, the authors find that the association between AI adoption and audit quality is driven by increased audit effort lag. Results are consistent and robust to endogeneity tests and sensitivity analyses.

Findings can complement the audit quality and corporate governance literature by clarifying that external audit must evolve through digitalization and the incorporation of newly developed digital tools, such as AI.