The moral reasoning of government accountants

Most of the research on the moral reasoning of public accountants in for-profit practice typically uses the Defining Issues Test (DIT) and, more recently, the DIT-2, as an instrument of choice. The instrument's key measure, the P score, is believed to be strongly related to political attitude. I test this relationship in the not-for profit sector. Bailey et al. (2005) measure the variance shared by the ethical and political measures of a sample of CPAs in public practice. They conclude that the confounding of political attitude may not be a serious problem in measuring moral reasoning abilities. I apply the methods used by Bailey et al. (2005) to a random sample of 198 CPAs employed in federal, local, and state government. For control purposes, I also examine several variables that moderate the relationship between political orientation and DIT scores.; I find a negative relationship between the moral reasoning [DIT- P scores] of government accountants in my sample and measures of political conservatism (R squared = .260). The other moral measures [N2 scores] of government accountants are also negatively correlated with political conservatism but less so than the P scores (R squared = .161). Although seemingly small, these represent the strongest correlations to date among accountants. Both job experience and age moderate this relationship between political orientation and DIT scores. Female government accountants scored higher than males although gender did not moderate the relationship between political orientation and DIT scores. As age and job experience increase, the statistical effect of political orientation on DIT scores becomes stronger. Government accountants in my sample were older but less conservative than comparable samples from the private sector, and did not increase their conservatism with age. The findings of Truett (1993) that conservatism increases with age may therefore be conditional on employment sector.