Accounting Education and Moral Competency of Accounting Students in Federal Polytechnic Ilaro, Ogun State, Nigeria
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2023-12
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Lead City University, Ibadan
Abstract
Moral competence serves as the bedrock of the accounting profession. This is because the general public places a high level of faith in the trustworthiness and faithful representation of the information that accountants which is critical for sustaining the profession's reputation and legitimacy. Due to the abundance of accounting scandals around the world during the past 20 years, its reputation and credibility have come under scrutiny. As a way to reverse this trend, accounting scholars have identified tertiary-level accounting education as a viable strategy to develop a new generation of morally competent accountants who will restore the public’s faith in the integrity of the profession. It was against this backdrop that this study examined the impact of accounting education on the moral competencies of accounting students enrolled at the
Federal Polytechnic Ilaro, Ogun State. The study adopted a cross-sectional survey research design based on the Deontology theory whereby open-ended ethical scenario-based questionnaires were distributed to 175 HND 2 accounting students in order to collect data on their perceptions of accounting education at the Polytechnic as in order to measure their moral competencies. Cronbach alpha of 0.81 for both questionnaires demonstrated their reliability as data collection instruments. Data on accounting education was also collected through a close- ended questionnaire survey of 12 accounting lecturers at the Polytechnic. Descriptive statistics was employed to analyse the demographic data of the respondents while multiple regression analysis was used to test the study’s hypotheses. The study found that accounting education had a considerable influence on accounting students’ moral competencies in terms of their honesty, objectivity, competence, confidentiality and professional behavior.
Keywords: Accounting education, moral competency and accounting profession
Word Count: 257
Description
Keywords
Accounting education, moral competency and accounting profession
Citation
Kate Turabia