Ethics In Accounting Education And Practice In Ghana

ABSTRACT Reports of unethical attitudes involving members of the accounting profession have increased in recent times. The reported ethical infractions occurring globally have resulted in the collapse of corporate bodies in developed and developing economies. Accounting educators and professional accounting bodies have been partly blamed for their failure to adequately prepare graduates through education and training. Others have blamed the ethical failures on the personal attributes of ethics (PAE) of accountants and organisational attributes of ethics (OAE) in the working environment together with other factors. The objective of this study has been to investigate the effect of ethics education interventions, personal attributes of ethics and organisational attributes of ethics on ethical attitudes of accountants (EAA) using evidence from Ghana, a developing country in sub-Saharan Africa. The study further examines ethics curriculum design of university and professional accounting programmes in Ghana. The study employed quantitative and qualitative research approaches. The first three objectives were addressed quantitatively whilst the fourth objective adopted a qualitative approach using interviews to answer the research questions. The study surveyed 77 accounting instructors from universities and 340 professional accountants. Thirteen key administrators including deans, heads of accounting departments (HoADs), senior officials and council members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Ghana (ICAG) and of the National Accreditation Board (NAB) were further interviewed. The principal component analysis was used to generate scores in measuring the study variables. The ordinary least square (OLS) estimation was used in the analysis of quantitative data. The results of the study reveal a positive and significant relationship between ethics related courses (ERC), method of teaching ethics (MTE), method of ethics intervention (MEI) and objectives of ethics courses (OEC). The results also show a positive and significant relationship between experience gained on the job and ethical attitude. The study further reveals that individual PAE and OAE in themselves are not sufficient in influencing ethical attitudes; rather they collectively combine to positively and significantly influence EAA. Additionally, faculty initiatives, industry demand, international benchmarking and modernisation are the drivers of ethics in the curriculum of universities and professional accounting programmes in Ghana. Finally, it was observed that the design of ethics in the curriculum of accounting programmes in Ghana is motivated by the desire to preserve the economy, the desire the desire to avoid corruption and by the dynamism of the business environment, globalisation and sustainability. The study has implications for the adoption of ERC, MTE and MEI in the development of ethics curriculum. Besides, the type of institution is key in the desire to achieve objectives set for making ethics interventions.