The adhesive structural mechanical performance is influenced by debond flaw. This paper presents a research on the effect of flaws on the mechanical performance of composite scarf joints. The experimental results show that the load-carrying capacity of composite scarf joints changed along with the location of the debond flaw. The location of the flaw in the bondline influences the failure mode. Additionally, the finite element method was employed to obtain the failure mode of the composite scarf joint. The adhesively bonded joints were modeled using ABAQUS software. The computational results show that flaws located at the edge of the bond region result in more pronounced load reduction than which located at the middle of bond region.