The purpose of this study is to examine the ethics education program of a
military academy for potential enhancement of accounting ethics programs. The
military academy emphasizes the core values of its honor code that are similar to
the AICPA’s Code of Professional Conduct. Using a survey describing two
ambiguous academic situations, the ethical perceptions of management students
at the military academy are compared to those of accounting students at a
control university to determine if there are any measurable differences
attributable to the academy’s ethics program.
This study found that military academy students were significantly more likely
than the control group to perceive academic behavior as unethical when it
directly violated their core values, but were not more likely to perceive academic
behavior as unethical when it did not violate their core values. These results
indicate that the ethics education program at the military academy may have
been useful in aligning students’ ethical perceptions with their code of conduct.
This implies that ethics education in accounting curriculums may want to emulate
aspects of the academy’s ethics program, most notably emphasizing the
accounting profession’s code of conduct to accounting students.