"It is very rare -- probably unheard of -- for a national call for better business ethics education and one for better accounting ethics education to come out of the same university's college of business and be covered at refereed academic conference and included in refereed journals," said Diane Swanson, an associate professor of management at K-State's College of Business Administration.

Swanson spearheaded a campaign to emphasize the importance of ethics in business education in an effort to prevent corporate ethics scandals like those at Enron and Arthur Andersen from recurring in the future. That endeavor has earned the endorsement of more than 200 professors, ethicists, business professionals, two conference boards and resulted in national and international media coverage.

Swanson teamed with Dann Fisher, a fellow K-State associate professor of accounting, in the effort.

"Recent scandals suggest that too many accounting graduates are ill equipped to recognize ethical dilemmas, much less prevent and resolve them. As educators, we should find this alarming," said Fisher.  

The proposal would require three hours of accounting ethics coursework and three hours of business ethics coursework as a condition of sitting for the certified public accountant exam, Fisher explained. The proposed rule does not have an impact on renewal of licenses which occurs after the exam is passed and after an experience requirement is met. The experience requirement is determined by each state board of accountancy and governs the right to practice in that state. Along with that, each state board requires a certain amount of continuing education as a condition of license renewal.

"The accounting profession, especially the large firms, see a need and have expressed support for ethics courses as part of the accounting curriculum," Fisher said. "The resistance expressed by the academic community is what I find disconcerting. In general, accounting faculty appear to be unwilling to change and, at the same time, bitter that an external body would attempt to force them to change curriculum. Regardless of the reasons, the status quo is unacceptable."

The Fisher-Swanson call in support of the proposed national rule for accounting ethics coursework was published in May in the American Accounting Association Teaching and Curriculum Section Newsletter. The pair will also elaborate on this call when they present a paper at the American Accounting Association Ethics Research Symposium in San Francisco in August.