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An International Meeting of 2005 Annual MeetingAugust 7–10, 2005
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Effective Learning Strategies Forum
Tuesday, August 9, 2005
Session 26
Increasing the Abilities of Students to Discriminate between Ethical and Unethical BehaviorsPresenters:
Mary Jo Billiot, New Mexico State University
Sid Glandon, The University of Texas at El PasoDescription:
The academic community is using its resources to heighten awareness of ethical issues and provide students with skills to use when faced with tough choices. Our teaching method aims to affect ethical awareness of students at an early stage in their academic career. Entry-level accountants rarely face an obvious ethical dilemma in their first few months of employment. As they become more familiar with company operating policies and their professional responsibilities increase, issues may become clearer and need to be addressed. For this reason the cases that the authors have developed are sequential in nature and are introduced after presenting material that helps the student strongly identify with the accounting profession. The cases provide a story of an entry-level accountant in his or her first accounting position. There is no clear ethical dilemma but rather very subtle clues as to weak internal controls that may not be obvious to a beginner. As the scenario develops more clues are provided until the ethical dilemma becomes more obvious. The focus of this method is on finding approaches that the instructor can use to help students identify situations as ethical dilemmas so that they can then develop appropriate coping skills.