Ethics Education in the Qualification of Professional Accountants: Insights from Australia and New Zealand

Abstract

This paper investigates how ethics is incorporated in the qualification process for prospective professional accountants across Australia and New Zealand. It does so by examining the structure of these qualification processes and by analysing the learning objectives and summarised content for ethics courses that prospective accountants take either at university or through the post-degree programs provided by CPA Australia and Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand. We do this to understand how the ‘sandwich’ approach to teaching ethics (Armstrong, Journal of Accounting Education 11(1):77–92, 1993) is implemented. This approach advocates a standalone ethics course, followed by ethical cases that are integrated across accounting courses, and subsequently a capstone course that combines ethics and professionalism. We test the extent to which this approach is adopted and examine how its application relates to the components of moral behaviour (Rest, Moral development: Advances in research and theory, Praeger Publishers, New York, 1986). The results provide three significant contributions. The first is that the ‘sandwich’ approach is not in place for most prospective accountants as only a minority of programs include a mandatory course with a substantial ethics component, and this is more likely in undergraduate rather than postgraduate programs. The second contribution is that although moral sensitivity and moral judgement are widely considered, little attention is given to issues of moral motivation and moral character. We suggest that change is unlikely without explicit ethical education requirements from the professional accounting bodies. The paper also makes a final contribution by proposing a more nuanced typology characterising the degree to which ethics is incorporated in particular courses.

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Journal of Business Ethics (2020) 164:61–80
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-018-4064-2
ORIGINAL PAPER
Ethics Education intheQualication ofProfessional Accountants:
Insights fromAustralia andNew Zealand
AndrewWest1· SherrenaBuckby1
Received: 1 August 2017 / Accepted: 14 November 2018 / Published online: 20 November 2018
© Springer Nature B.V. 2018
Abstract
This paper investigates how ethics is incorporated in the qualification process for prospective professional accountants across
Australia and New Zealand. It does so by examining the structure of these qualification processes and by analysing the learn-
ing objectives and summarised content for ethics courses that prospective accountants take either at university or through
the post-degree programs provided by CPA Australia and Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand. We do this
to understand how the ‘sandwich’ approach to teaching ethics (Armstrong, Journal of Accounting Education 11(1):77–92,
1993) is implemented. This approach advocates a standalone ethics course, followed by ethical cases that are integrated
across accounting courses, and subsequently a capstone course that combines ethics and professionalism. We test the extent
to which this approach is adopted and examine how its application relates to the components of moral behaviour (Rest, Moral
development: Advances in research and theory, Praeger Publishers, New York, 1986). The results provide three significant
contributions. The first is that the ‘sandwich’ approach is not in place for most prospective accountants as only a minority of
programs include a mandatory course with a substantial ethics component, and this is more likely in undergraduate rather
than postgraduate programs. The second contribution is that although moral sensitivity and moral judgement are widely
considered, little attention is given to issues of moral motivation and moral character. We suggest that change is unlikely
without explicit ethical education requirements from the professional accounting bodies. The paper also makes a final contri-
bution by proposing a more nuanced typology characterising the degree to which ethics is incorporated in particular courses.
Keywords Accounting education· Accounting ethics· Australia· Ethics education· New Zealand· Professional
education· Professional ethics
Introduction
Professional accountants are expected to maintain a com-
mitment to ethical behaviour in their business dealings.
However, recurring accounting scandals remind educators
that more steps need to be taken by professional accounting
bodies. There is, accordingly, an ongoing need to understand
how tertiary accounting students are currently taught ethics
and how ethics education might contribute to the ultimate
aim of improving ethical behaviour. Current research has
suggested that a “sandwich approach” (Armstrong 1993)
is an effective means to address accounting ethics educa-
tion—incorporating a standalone ethics course followed
by ethical cases integrated across various disciplines and
a capstone course that combines ethics and professional-
ism. While generally supported (Levy and Mitschow 2008;
Massey and Van Hise 2009; Swanson 2005), it is unclear
just how such an approach is currently implemented, and
whether this approach is successful in translating all four of
the components of moral behaviour originally proposed by
Rest (1986), such that professional accountants meet their
ethical responsibilities.
To address this, we examine how ethics is incorporated in
accounting programs across Australia and New Zealand. The
accounting educational programs in these countries provide
rich context and constitute critical cases (Flyvbjerg 2006;
Eckstein 2000) to understand how the structure of account-
ing education and the qualification process work together in
providing ethics content to students. Additionally, together
* Andrew West
andrew.west@qut.edu.au
Sherrena Buckby
s.buckby@qut.edu.au
1 School ofAccountancy, QUT Business School, Queensland
University ofTechnology, Brisbane, Australia
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