Recent fraudulent financial scandals have the public questioning whether accountants and auditors have forgotten their professional responsibilities. Changes have been proposed by the Education Committee of the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) to increase the credit hour requirements in ethics education, supporting the importance of ethics training for our current students who will become our new professionals. However, prior studies on the effectiveness of ethics education in accounting have produced mixed results, leaving academics questioning whether ethics and professional responsibility can be taught. This study explores the impact of a 12-week professional responsibility capstone course required of all accounting seniors. This study takes a new approach in evaluating the effectiveness of ethics education by administering a course evaluation to assess the effectiveness of the components of the professional responsibility course (ethics intervention) in conjunction with the DIT-2, and vignettes related to accounting and business ethical dilemmas to determine whether ethical evaluations changed after an ethics intervention. This research provides interesting insights into the assessment of classroom instruction that are significant for faculty who wish to evaluate the effectiveness of ethics interventions.
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