| Corporate scandals such as Enron, WorldCom, and Arthur Andersen have diminished the public's trust in public accountants' ability to perform the audit task with integrity, objectivity, and trustworthiness. The corporate scandals have also brought a great deal of scrutiny to the accounting profession causing an increase in government regulation. The upswing in ethical scandals has heightened congressional, educational, and organizational awareness of ethical decision-making. Nevertheless, ethical decision-making within public accounting is complex because ethical dilemmas are frequently embedded within technical dilemmas. In other to provide a better understanding of the ethical decision-making process of auditors', this study investigated the multiple factors that are associated with auditors' ethical sensitivity. The conceptual framework used to investigate ethical sensitivity included the ethical decision-making model developed by Rest (1986) and the moral intensity model developed by Jones (1991). A questionnaire was mailed to 1,300 enrolled members of the California Society of Certified Public Accountants. The questionnaire included three scenarios and items measuring personal, organizational, and issue-related characteristics. One hundred twenty-seven usable responses were received. The methodology used to analyze the results included descriptive statistics, bivariate analyses, and hierarchical regression models. Overall, the results indicate that auditors' vary in their ability to recognize ethical issues. The variance in ethical issue identification was in part due to personal characteristics. Thus, gender, age, and education were the three personal characteristics significantly associated with the auditors' ability to recognize ethical issues. This study also found that issue-related characteristics were significantly related to ethical sensitivity. Proximity and social consensus were the two issue-related characteristics that significantly predicted ethical sensitivity. Therefore, ethical sensitivity was heightened by the auditors' affinity for the potential victims of unethical acts. Likewise, the auditors' ethical sensitivity was heightened by the extent of social agreement surrounding the ethical issues. The significant findings, implications, and future research are also discussed. |
