회계감사교육이 윤리적 사고와 윤리적 행동에 미치는 영향

Abstract

The Enron scandal in the USA and the Daewoo scandal in Korea have made the users of accounting information realize the importance of accounting transparency and also have formed a social consensus about it. As a result, the USA government has enacted ‘Sarbanes-Oxley Act’ and the Korean government has enacted ‘Internal Accounting Control System’ and ‘Securities Class Action.’ However, the premise of such systems should be to correct accounting ethics. In this regard, various studies have been conducted in relation to the necessity of ethics education and its orientation. But before the discussion about the necessity of ethics education, there is a need to review the effect of accounting ethics education that is implemented in universities. In this study, a suggestion was made about audit education, in expectation of improving the level of accounting ethics, and an analysis was made of whether audit education can function as accounting ethics education. To be concrete, this study was conducted on the first group composed of students who take audit lectures and the second group composed of students who take intermediate financial accounting lectures, and a survey was conducted on them before and after their having lectures in order to analyze measure the levels of moral reasoning and moral behavior. An analysis was made of the relation between the level of audit education and that of accounting ethics. And we also analyze the relation between the level of intermediate financial accounting education and that of accounting ethics. This study uses paired t-test and regression to test hypothesis. As a result, it was found that the level of moral reasoning was more improved in students who received audit education, and that the level of moral behavior was in proportion to that of audit education. In the case of students who received intermediate financial accounting lectures, significant differences were not observed after lectures in relation to moral reasoning and behavior. The previous studies, relative to accounting ethics education, have been focused on the necessity of ethics education and teaching methods without the review on the effect of ethics education that is implemented in universities, and accordingly they could not signpost accounting ethics education concretely. Without considering the applicability of accounting ethics education to the educational environment of contemporary universities, it would be meaningless to find the method to strengthen accounting ethics education or it would be difficult to signpost it. Thus, this study is significant in the sense that it is to review whether the audit education, which is implemented in universities, can function as accounting ethics education and to analyze its effect. In addition, this study will probably be used as a reference in determining directions of ethics education in the future. This study has following limitations. First, it is virtually impossible that the levels of moral reasoning and moral behavior could be precisely measured. Second, the ethic cases used in the survey are focused on a certain circumstance with respect to auditing.