Accounting Ethics Education in Nigeria: Value-Improving or Value-Deteriorating Tool?

The symbiotic relationship between good ethical disposition and accounting profession is incontestable. Aside from the previous infamous global corporate scandals, the recent fraudulent practices revelation in the Nigerian public life is a serious source of concern. This study examines the impact of ethics education on the potential accountants to establish whether the propriety of their conduct in the future is guaranteed. This necessitates the survey of accounting students based on the three forms of ownership of university in Nigeria. The findings of the survey based on the structured questionnaire using Kruskal-Wallis tests show that, the students’ groups agree on the value-relevance of ethics education, its ability to expose them to means of resolving future ethical challenges and their readiness to become whistle-blowers. However, the students’ groups’ failure to agree on the necessity of ethical competence for accountants and their disagreement on their confidence to tackle unfamiliar problems signal what is expected of accounting educators for students to become more ethically-equipped. Also, the expectation of the reinforcement of whistle-blower protection is evident from its intertwining with disclosure of unethical practices. The timing and implications of this study on the activities of accounting educators and policy makers accentuate its uniqueness.