Ekonomski Vjesnik (Jan 2019)
Importance of ethics in the education of accountants
Abstract
Confidence in the financial statements as well as in presented business results is of particular importance when assessing the financial position and performance of an enterprise. One can assume that the level of confidence in the presented results of operations will be even greater if the society in which the company operates qualifies as unethical or one in which it is common not to comply with high ethical standards. The question is whether ethics can be learned. There are different views on the above issue but what certainly is true is the fact that it is not harmful if education on the importance of applying high ethical principles in business is provided through the education system. Several research questions have been posed in this paper. The first question is to what extent are prospective professionals in the field of economics being educated on business ethics through their system of higher education? Therefore, educational programmes of selected economics faculties were analysed. Furthermore, due to the important role of accountants in financial reporting, as well as the fact that there is an increasing awareness of the requirements of ethical conduct, the main objective of this paper is to examine how future accountants perceive ethics. The results of the empirical research conducted using the survey method are encouraging as they indicate a relatively high level of awareness of future professional accountants on the importance of applying the highest ethical standards in business.
