Comparison of Professional Accounting Associations’ Inclusion of Ethics in the Practical Experience Requirement

Abstract

This research is part of a much wider endeavour to determine the best practicesin ethics education and the value of ethics in professional accountants’ lives from the very formation, in their university years to when they are members of professional associations and employees. This particular article focuses on how ethics features in the practical experience requirement (PER) from the professional associations’ Initial Professional Development (IPD). Bodies were selected based on whether they are IFAC members, their size and population of their country of origin. ACCA (Association of Chartered Certirfied Accountants) was selected as a standard given its international coverage and CECCAR (Body of Expert and Licensed Accountants of Romania) was selected because of the authors’ origins or place of study. The exams’ sequence in the route to become a member of a profesional accountancy body was analysed as part of a different article in which a correlation was not found between the size of the association (in the hypothesis that larger associations have more resources to invest in their qualification) and availability of exam-prep materials for the wider public as well as how much ethics is featured in them. Given that for practical experience requirement there were less readily available public materials, the research questions became simpler for PER than in the case of exams hence we attempted an overarching comparison of whether ethics was clearly featured in the PER of chose bodies and also how it was examined or demonstred over the practical experience period. We found that the approach was very consistent across the selected associations with all of them strongly featuring ethics in their PER. Hopefully our efforts will give other researchers, educators of ethics and national bodies themsevles a strong starting point to adapt their curricula and approach on ethics.