Abstract
Due to a series of high profile accounting scandals and corporate collapses such as Enron, World.Com and Andersen, ethical conduct has been widely recognized as a crucial element in accounting profession and education. The growing concern over the ethics of professionals has also called for more academic research into this critical area. Our study aims at assessing ethical behaviors of the future accounting professionals (i.e. final year accounting students) in Malaysia. This study which uses questionnaire survey examined the students’ ethical attitudes as to whether they would act unethically in an examination. Also, their attitudes towards whistleblowing – if they become aware of such unethical conduct were examined. A vast majority of students (73 per cent), decided to be on the safe side – neither being purely unethical nor whistleblowers. Of the students, 11 per cent chose to become whistleblowers. While only 16 per cent would act unethically in exam, the percentage significantly declined once the risk of being caught was introduced. This indicates that students have not moved further from the first level of Kohlberg’s stages of moral development which highly depends on the punishment and penalty in order to behave ethically. Results also reveal that students with good academic achievement were less likely to cheat in exam. Furthermore, a larger proportion of male students as compared to female tend to behave unethically. Overall, the study indicates favorable results since the majority of respondents would not prefer to indulge in unethical behavior, although they are not being purely ethical.
Highlights
The accounting scandals and corporate collapses surrounding Enron, World-Com, Global, Crossing and Tyco have caused some to believe that there exist a “crisis in accounting” (Business Week, 2002)
We provide repeating scenarios which includes the element of a chance being caught, for all the three available scenarios, if the students are involve in any of the unethical action
This, may not be a good sign of students’ ethical behavior, which partly reflects their willingness to involve in unethical behavior given the situation faced by them out rightly benefited their self-interest, in particular their academic standing
Summary
The accounting scandals and corporate collapses surrounding Enron, World-Com, Global, Crossing and Tyco have caused some to believe that there exist a “crisis in accounting” (Business Week, 2002). There are cases where accountants are sued by their clients, as well as shareholders of their clients respectively. In the former, examples of companies which sued accountants are Bandar Utama City Corporation Sdn. Bhd. In the latter, among the accounting firms involved are Johari Abas and Anor and David Low See Keat and Orsants, where they were sued by the shareholders for their www.ccsenet.org/ies losses because the former had failed, as expected to detect wrongdoings of their client companies in the course of their normal duties (Adam et al, 2002)
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