Do United States Accountants’ Personal Values Match the Profession’s Values (Ethics Code)?

• In Event: Accounting and Society

Abstract

The ethical values of the United States (US) accounting profession are incorporated into codes of ethics of various professional accounting organizations. How well do these professional values match to the personal values that accountants bring with them to the workplace? The congruence of personal values to organizational values (the values of the accounting profession) contributes to job performance, job satisfaction, and ethical behavior. This paper addresses two research questions: (1) what are the personal ethical values of today’s leaders in the US accounting profession; and (2) are these personal ethical values congruent with the profession’s ethical code? The highest ranked personal values are honesty, responsibility, capable, courageous, loving, and independent. Findings indicate that US accountants’ personal values do correspond to the values of the profession. For each highly prioritized personal value, there is one or more parallel with the profession’s values, as represented by the US American Institute of CPAs ethics code.

Authors

• Donald Lamar Ariail, Kennesaw State University

• katherine Taken Smith, Texas A & M Corpus Christi

• Murphy Smith, Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi