6.3 Suggestions for future research
As a suggestion for future research, perhaps further study can be undertaken to see the impact of the introduction of the business ethics course on accountants’ ethical judgments.
As mentioned above, the course was made compulsory effective from July 2007, hence the first batch of students following the course is expected to graduate in October 2011.
It would be interesting to see if there is a difference between the ethical attitudes of accountants who had followed this course and those who did not.
The finding can provide some insight on the effectiveness of the business ethics course and whether it should be taught as a separate course or integrated in other accounting subjects.
Future study may also employ interview technique to unravel reasons why active involvement in the profession activities led to more tolerance of questionable scenarios.
Engaging in interviews which allows probing into the issues may provide further insights into various (such as legal, culture and ethical) aspects of the business environment and how it can have some impact on ethical decisions of the accountants.
As shown in the regression models, the highest R squared is 22 percent (see Table VI).
This means that almost 80 percent of factors influencing accountants’ ethical judgments have not been captured by the models.
Hence, interviews may shed light on other factors influencing accountants’ ethical judgments.
It may also be worthwhile to study factors influencing ethical positions of other professions to see whether the Malaysian government policy on women participation is having a positive impact on corporate ethical values.