ABSTRACT
The concept of professional ethics is more than an external measure by which the profession can maintain a virtuous image. For many practitioners, it is a concept that implies a reasoning capability that permits the individual to render judgment unaltered by self-interest that could impair his or her professional responsibility. The ethical reasoning process is part of the individual’s overall moral consciousness from which he or she deals with difficult conflict or dilemmas in everyday practice. Ethical choice is just one of many types of decisions that the accountant or auditor must render in order to be an effective member of this profession. In this chapter, we first discuss the ethical domain in the accounting and auditing profession,1 and then relate the theory of ethical development to judgment by the use of one case study. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the professional implications of ethical reasoning theory and a review of recent empirical studies in the accounting and auditing field.
