Fact or fiction? Elevating accounting students' ethical sensitivity and moral reasoning with ethics education interventions

This study surveys the content of published articles investigating the impact of accounting ethics interventions on students’ ethical sensitivity and moral reasoning. The results of a sample of 27 articles show that research on ethics interventions is aimed primarily at elevating students’ moral reasoning development with far fewer articles aimed at understanding elevations in students’ ethical sensitivity. The research findings overwhelmingly support a positive effect on students’ moral reasoning and ethical sensitivity primarily attributed to interventions incorporating subject matter on ethical theories, codes of ethics, decision-making frameworks, and case discussion. The adoption of a discrete or a pervasive approach to learning ethics have gained relatively equal attention and endorsement of its ability to elevate students’ ethical sensitivity and moral reasoning. The results also indicate that the mere presence of ethics education may not in itself enhance students’ ethical sensitivity or moral reasoning, but a carefully designed intervention is more likely to achieve a positive outcome.