A New Approach to Teaching Ethical Decision Making to Accounting Students

Steven Mintz, PhD

In BriefAccounting educators have used ethical decision-making models to teach ethics to accounting students for many years. The traditional models rely on prescriptive reasoning to analyze alternative courses of action and select the best choice, but these models fail to adequately consider organizational variables, including internal policies and practices, the code of ethics, and the role of supporters in the organization who can help strengthen a position. The author proposes a decision-making model that combines the Ethics and Compliance Initiative's PLUS model, which uses ethics filters to facilitate analysis and incorporates elements of organizational culture, and the virtue considerations of James Rest's Model of Moral Behavior, which define ethical character, an important factor for accounting professionals, who must serve the public interest.