Students' perceptions of accounting ethics in a Spanish university: does it really matter to be taught an ethics course?

The interest in ethical issues has increased in higher education, and more specifically in accounting. However, despite the interest that business ethics has generated in the academic community especially during the last two decades the timely and relevant field of accounting ethics has so far not received the proper attention that it deserves. In Spain, the current economic crisis and a number of well-known corporate accounting scandals have intensified widespread concern for accounting ethics issues. However, despite their importance, specific courses and modules on accounting ethics are not common in Spanish universities. Furthermore, even in such scarce cases where these courses are taught, there is very little consensus on their objectives and methodologies. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether differences exist between the perceptions from students who have previously taken business ethics courses and the perceptions from students who have previously taken business ethics courses and those from students who have not taken these courses. This study was conducted through a survey delivered to 551 students of the Bachelor of Business Administration at the Technical University of Valencia in Spain. Our findings suggest that students perceived significant differences in perceptions of the importance of ethics goals in accounting education depending on whether students have previously attended ethics courses or not.