An issue related to SST is an observation in the literature of an Inverted-U Phenomenon IUP
in moral reasoning of CPAs in public practice. Ponemon 1988 first reported this finding in his
dissertation and then proceeded to report his results in a few papers Ponemon 1992a; Ponemon
and Gabhart 1990; Ponemon and Gabhart 1993 that provided further explanation for the phenomenon.
Table 2 and Figure 1 present the initial results from Ponemon 1988. As shown in the table
and figure, the P-score of seniors of 39.7 is significantly lower than that of managers P-score
45.5. However, the senior managers’ P-score of 37.3 indicates that managers with lower P-scores
may have been promoted to the senior manager rank. The partners’ average P-score of 30.9
provides a further drop in moral reasoning as evidence of promotion of those with low P-scores to
the rank of partner. From the low-high-low pattern of average P-scores in Table 2 i.e., an
inverted-U, Ponemon 1988 suggested the existence of IUP in the moral reasoning of accountants
in public practice. However, this conclusion was challenged by Bernardi and Arnold 1997,
whose results are also presented in Table 2 and Figure 1. Specifically, Bernardi and Arnold 1997
observed no significant mean score differences between the ranks, with one exception where data
from one of the firms investigated was consistent with that of Ponemon’s 1988 IUP results.8 A
later longitudinal study by Bernardi and Arnold 2004 further challenged the generalizeability of
IUP in accounting.