ABSTRACT
Accounting education should facilitate technical proficiency and ethical sensibility for producing high-quality financial information. The ideal public accountant is a ‘virtuous accountant’ making use of two languages: (1) the concepts and decision procedures of accounting standards and codes of conduct; (2) the concepts and arguments of moral philosophy. The outcome of accounting education is the capacity to fulfill an ethics of duty and an ethics of virtue.
Public accountants have a moral obligation to adhere to principles, follow rules and exercise judgment in accordance with professional standards. The practice of accounting calls for moral discernment and a motivation to act morally. Accounting educators are responsible for supporting a community of learning—of mentored dialogue and exemplary teachers whose strategies foster the special knowledge of the technical enterprise of accounting and encourage development of ethically responsible professionals.
Public accountants serve the public interest; that is, accountants produce a significant human good. This chapter emphasizes character formation and inculcating auditor virtues while enhancing practical judgment. It projects a virtue ethics approach in conjunction with technical training to prepare for entry into a principles-based, rules-oriented profession of public service. It introduces four cases and highlights the virtue of integrity within a teaching strategy to develop technical proficiency and ethical sensibility in an accounting ethics curriculum.
