Does Education Improve Ethical Attitudes?

Abstract

Some advocate that ethics can and should be taught in the classroom; while others view that ethics cannot be taught at this stage, and a person is either ethical or not. In today's business environment with the growth of accounting, the importance of accounting ethics has increased as a result of recent scandals such as Enron and Arthur Andersen. Such scandals have focused attention on ethical attitudes and how they can be improved. In this context, this study focuses on ethical attitudes and whether they are teachable or not. Within this framework, these theoretical concepts are supported by empirical research into whether ethical attitudes can be acquired through education. The correlation between educational background and ethical attitudes was tested. Overall we found that there are no significant differences in the mean of the attitudes and no significant relation between education and ethical attitudes.