Accountants' Value Preferences and Moral Reasoning

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between accountants' personal values and their moral reasoning. In particular, we hypothesize that there is an inverse relationship between accountants' values and moral reasoning. This investigation is important because the literature suggests that accountants' conformity with rule-based standards may be one reason for their relatively lower scores on instruments that measure moral reasoning. We administered the Rokeach Values Survey (Rokeach 1973) and the Defining Issues Test (Rest 1979) to164 graduating accounting students enrolled in capstone courses at two universities in the Northeastern United States. As entrants to the accounting profession these subjects bring their values and moral reasoning to bear on their judgments and decisions in the workplace. We collected data at the beginning and the end of the semester to determine the test-retest reliability of our measurements. We find a highly significant inverse relationship between values and moral reasoning. We also find that graduating accounting students do not prefer Conformity above other personal values such as Self-actualization and Idealism for which we also find positive relationships with moral reasoning. Implications for instruction and research are discussed.