Ethics in exam-supporting documents of professional accounting associations

This article aims to find out the degree to which selected professional associations across the globe publicly share their exams’ preparatory materials, whether ethics features in these materials and whether the degree of transparency and how much ethics is featured in their curricula are somehow linked to their size (and hence availability of resources).

The selection of associations includes the largest IFAC member bodies from the worlds’ most populous countries and the largest non-merged international accountancy association, ACCA for comparison as well as the Romanian accountancy body, CECCAR due to their origins. This article is part of a much wider research through which I attempt to give a 360-degree view of ethics education in the accounting profession to then reach the conclusion of whether its stakeholders feel that it is sufficient, relevant and enforceable. This will give a starting point for educators of ethics in accounting to adapt their teaching as they see fit. Already I have looked at how ethics is included in Romanian economic faculties’ curricula (through desktop-review of curricula content, interviews with professors and questionnaires with students) and will enhance this current research by further looking into how ethics is taught, examined and implemented in professional accounting associations’ Initial and Continuous Professional Development programs.

The conclusions of this research were that there was a large variation between associations in how transparently they publicly published exam preparation materials and also whether ethics was featured. The transparency and inclusion of ethics was not linked to the size of the associations.