Comparison of Perception of Ethics Among the Accounting Professionals, Accounting Educators and Accounting Students

The concept of ethics in accounting education has gained paramount importance in todays world. The accounting professionals had experienced controversially the deepest crisis regarding their professions with the discovery that accountants had acceded in notable fictitious financial reporting by corporate giants such as Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Satyam and the like. The accounting profession in India has started focussing more on accounting ethics at undergraduate and postgraduate levels due to various corporate scandals, especially Satyam scam in India and other scams in the world. Through the close survey of various corporate scams, it is apparently clear that business professionals are likely to be involved in the corporate scandals, their ethical behaviour can be used to measure ethical conduct. Commerce or business students are to become future leaders in business field and their behaviour largely affects the performance of businesses as well as the economic development of the society. Because of the scandals, professionals trustworthiness and objectiveness have raised questioned. The various corporate scams have led to increase the demand for accounting ethics within the professionals and students who are in commerce or business education. The purpose of the study is to explore the perception of ethics of accounting students, teachers, and professionals. For the purpose, we sent a questionnaire to accounting professionals, teachers, and students through email and hard copy to collect their views and we have used the z score test to make a comparison of the perceptions of ethics among the accounting groups. The result shows significant differences among accounting students, teachers, and professionals regarding perception of accounting ethics.