Measuring ethical ideology among accounting practitioners and students/ Noor Emilina Mohd Nasir, Nur Raihana Mohd Sallem and Rohana Othman

A review of the business and marketing ethics literature has provided evidence that the ethical behaviour of a person may be influenced by his ethical ideology. In the business world, the management and accounting practitioners will face the situation where they have to decide on whether they want to engage in activities that benefit themselves or others. Previous literature found that accounting practitioners tend to be more ethical than accounting students since they have more working experience and awareness on their duty than accounting students. Therefore, this study aims to measure the ethical ideology among accounting practitioners and student. Additionally, this study intends to ascertain whether gender will affect the ethical ideology of the respective respondents. A number of studies provide evidence that differences in moral behaviour can be explained by gender and it is an important demographic variable which influences one’s ethical decision. The results reveal that there is no significant difference of ethical ideology between the accounting practitioners and students. There is however a significant difference between the males and females as the males are more relativistic than the females, while the females are more idealistic than the males. The findings from this study will serve to help in determining the ethical ideology of an individual and would provide valuable information that can explain the differences among individuals when making ethical judgements.