An examination of differences in ethical decision-making between Canadian business students and accounting professionals

This study investigates the differences in individuals' ethical decision ma king between Canadian university business students and accounting professio nals. We examine the differences in three measures known to be important in the ethical decision making process: ethical awareness, ethical orientatio n, and intention to perform questionable acts. We tested for differences in these three measures in eight different questionable actions among three g roups: students starting business studies, those in their final year of uni versity, and professional accountants. The measures of awareness capture the extent to which respondents felt that a particular action was unethical according to each of several ethical cri teria. We found few differences between the two student groups on these mea sures, suggesting that their education had minimal effect on raising their awareness of the ethical issues in the vignettes. Indeed, overall, the grad uating student's scores were marginally lower than those of the entry-level students. However, the professionals viewed some actions as significantly less ethical than did the graduating students. The measures of ethical orientation capture the weight respondents placed o n each of the criteria above in their evaluation of the overall morality of an action. The differences between the three groups were generally small, and were a function of the vignette, consistent with Jones' (1991) model of issue-contingent ethical reasoning. The measures of intention capture the extent to which a respondent perceive s that s/he would perform the action. There were significant differences be tween the groups in three of the eight vignettes, driven by a difference be tween the professionals and the other two student groups. The awareness mea sures were strong predictors of intention. We discuss the implications of t hese findings for professional training and future research.