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Notes

The first two are, respectively, a lack of space in the curriculum and a lack of adequate instructional resources.

Technical competence and due professional care are required by the First and Third General Standards of what was formerly known in the USA as Generally Accepted Auditing Standards (GAAS). GAAS was adopted, on an interim basis, by the Public Companies Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB, 2001); see AU Section 150. Subsequent to that, the US SEC (2004) ruled that GAAS and the standards of the PCAOB are the same since the PCAOB adopted GAAS. Thus, the General Standards continue under the auspices of the PCAOB. The same concepts are applied on an international basis to reliance on the internal audit function by the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB, 2007); see http://www.ifac.org/Members/DownLoads/2007_IAASB_Handbook.pdf.

Gaining necessary approvals for our MSA program required affirmative votes at the School, University, and State levels. Not surprisingly, the process took the entire 2004–05 academic year and meant that, realistically, we could not begin offering the program until the 2006–07 academic year.

Two examples include the Annual Symposium on Research in Accounting Ethics, which is sponsored by the Professionalism and Ethics Committee of the American Accounting Association, and the Annual Meeting of the Society for Business Ethics.

Although we have reviewed a large number of ethics texts, to date, none has met our needs. Pure business ethics texts cover ethical principles but do not deal with the dilemmas that are unique to accounting. Those that deal specifically with accounting tend to fall into one of two groups: (1) those that were written following the ‘expectation gap’ period in the USA in the mid-1980s; and (2) those written following the more recent scandals (e.g. Enron, Worldcom, Parmalat). While portions of some of the books are useful, it is difficult (if not impossible) to find a text that includes a principled approach to ethical theory and consideration of ethical dilemmas both in public practice and outside public practice (e.g. accounting in industry). Many texts that focus only on public practice are largely code or case-driven and ignore ethical principles. There are few, if any, accounting ethics texts devoted to ethical issues outside of public practice.

The course syllabus is available upon request from either author.

Our university's Applied Ethics Program ‘integrates interdisciplinary courses, seminars, lectures, colloquia, and workshops in the fields of professional ethics (i.e. business, healthcare, science, law, engineering, education, and communication), ethics for the citizen (i.e. government, community, environmental concerns, war and peace) and global studies (i.e. ethical dimensions of global health, environment, business and humanitarian action).’ Students may complete courses as part of a minor in Applied Ethics or as electives toward other majors/minors.