Determinants of Fraudulent Tendencies on Public Accountancy in Indonesia

Accounting fraud is the intentional manipulation of accounting data to create a false appearance of corporate financial health or obtain personal benefits. If problems like this occur continuously, it will cause fraud that is detrimental to many parties. Therefore, efforts to minimize fraud need to do an in-depth analysis of the causes of fraud. One of them is analyzing the tendency of public accountant fraud through the fraud hexagon perspective. Georgios L. Vousinas developed the fraud hexagon in 2019. The fraud hexagon explains that fraud can occur due to six factors, namely, 1) pressure, 2) opportunity, 3) rationalization, 4) capability, 5) arrogance and 6) collusion. This theoretical concept is the basis of this research. This research aims to obtain empirical evidence regarding the influence of the fraud hexagon factor on the tendency of public accountant fraud accompanied by a moderating variable of professional ethics. The questionnaire method was used to collect data for analysis. The sample in this study is all public accountants working at public accounting firms registered with the Indonesian Ministry of Finance (Kementerian Keuangan) in 2022. The total sample is 107 respondents. To analyze data Moderated Regression Analysis (MRA) was used. The results of this study are pressure, rationalization, opportunity, capability, and arrogance do not affect public accountant fraud tendencies. Collusion is a factor that influences the tendency of public accountants to commit fraud. The ethics of the accounting profession do not moderate the hexagon fraud factor's effect on public accountants' tendency to commit fraud. Other related parties can use the results of this study to prevent public accountant fraud through policies related to collusive practices because only collusion increases the desire of public accountants to commit fraud.