Principle of Professional Competence and Due Care: Sequel to Academics’ Defiance

This paper studied how accounting academics’ defiance of professional competence and due care (PCDC) threatens the existence of their employing universities in Ghana. Through cross-sectional survey, data collected from 1,225 accountants and analysed by Cronbach’s alpha, tests of differences-between-proportions, and one-way ANOVA showed that few academics defy PCDC yet students would not recommend their universities to others. Defiance threatens universities’ existence through reduction in enrolment, loss of accreditation/charter, and high labour turnover. The accounting profession and universities must provide activities, policies, practices, programmes and punitive measures that are capable of averting incidents of defiance of the PCDC principle. Keywords: professional competence and due care, cost consequences, accounting academic, accounting ethics, non-adherence