TRAINING ACCOUNTING STUDENTS TO ACT ETHICALLY: THE BALANCE BETWEEN ACADEMIC KNOWLEDGE AND SOFT SKILLS

Accounting professionals have responsibilities to the Tax Authority on behalf of their clients. These responsibilities require an utter ethical behaviour in the management of their daily activities. To be a Certified Public Accountant is mandatory to access the Professional Order of the Certified Public Accountants, as full member, which have some admission criteria. Starting in 2009, one of these criteria includes a written evaluation of ethics issues made through a mandatory written exam to access the professional order. The literature about ethics on accounting education is already significant, and it is often referred the relevance of understanding if academic knowledge that candidates must demonstrate leads to an effective soft skill. This study analysed learning outcomes of all academic degrees in business sciences to find out if the "ethics" issues appears as one of expected outcome. Also, the current research analyses not only the CPAs perception about ethics as a soft skill in the profession, but also compares the self- assessments about ethical behaviour in CPAs certified before or after 2009. The methodological approach, after a previous literature review, embraced two empirical studies based on the analysis of official data and the results of a survey build specifically for this purpose. Results shows that only few academic degrees have learning outcomes with reference to ethics issues. However, the opinion of the CPAs is almost unanimous on the great importance of ethics in the job duties. No differences are found in the self- evaluation in terms of ethical behaviours among CPAs certified before, in and after 2009.