The Necessity of Fraud Education for Accounting Students: A Research Study From Turkey

Abstract

Accounting is a social science. Recent developments in society have necessitated new regulations in accounting and required accountants to apply these regulations. In this context, it is argued that accounting academics should revise their course material to educate students more appropriately to the current environment. After several accounting scandals in the world, especially in the USA, ethics course in business schools have become required by accounting related institutions like the American International Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the Association of Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). It is aimed to educate more ethical students by integrating ethics into accounting programs and thereby it is hoped / expected that it will be possible to reduce the level of fraud in the accounting world with more ethics educated accountants. A similar level of pressure is not seen with regard to fraud education in business schools. We argue however that even if an accountant behaves ethically, he/she should know how to behave when faced with fraud in the business environment and so needs knowledge about fraud detection, fraud prevention, fraud investigation and fraud reporting. In the business schools of USA and Europe, fraud education has started to take its deserved place in the curriculum and research centers on fraud are being opened by universities. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiner (ACFE), which is the largest nongovernmental organization in the world with 31.000 members, supports universities and accounting academicians with different facilities like courses and books. ACFE supports 295 universities where there is at least 3 credit courses under the name of fraud examination in USA. The other nongovernmental organization which supports fraud education in the accounting programs is the American Instituation of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). Turkey, IFAC member and candidate member of the European Union, tries to follow recent developments in the world of accounting. Even if there is no pressure by any institution, Caliyurt (2003) noted that 55.3% of the accounting academicians teach about ethics in their accounting courses. This study aims to determine the importance of fraud education as taught by Turkish accounting academicians to accounting students in public and private business schools. As the result it is found that 50% of the accounting academician teach about fraud in their accounting courses but, unfortunately, only 7.1 % of them had education on fraud during their personal education.

Accounting Ethics Education Research

“…It was also during this period, new topics emerged with researchers' investigating the relationship between ethics and religion (Auyeung, Dagwell, Ng, & Sands, 2006;Burks & Sellani, 2008;Levy & Mitschow, 2008). The international spread of accounting ethics education research occurred in this decade with the study of ethics education in developing countries appearing in published research, including: Malaysia (O'Leary & Mohamad, 2006Rahman, 2003); Turkey (Caliyurt & Crowther, 2006); China (Chan & Leung, 2006); and how and why to teach ethics in South Africa (Naudé, 2008)..…”

“…Research on ethics education in accounting stems from attempting to understand its importance to the development of future accounting professionals (Abdolmohammadi, 2008;Maruszewska, 2011;Caliyurt & Crowther, 2006;Uyar & GÜNGÖRMÜŞ, 2013;Warinda, 2013). This body of literature addresses the importance of ethics education in terms of its goals but also evaluates potential problems and issues in the delivery of accounting ethics education.…”

“…Understanding guanxi is popular in the relational society of China in which loyalty to one's superior tends to take precedence over one's commitment to professional and ethical obligations (Yang & Wu, 2009). Singh & Vasudeva (2006);Caliyurt & Crowther (2006) identify important shortcomings in the ethics education imparted to future accounting professionals in India. Ramirez (2017) examine the impact of the financial corruption in Spain on the accounting curriculum and the development of ethical competencies among students.…”

The role of accounting literature and professional training in enhancing common life-based characteristics held by a forensic accountant (an empirical investigation)

“…This emphasis is attributed to the importance of forensic accounting and based on many indications such as recognising it as a discipline (Mitric et al, 2012;Salleh and Ab Aziz, 2014) or a sub-discipline (Stone and Miller, 2012), giving it the status of a profession (Renzhoua, 2011;Huber, 2012;Dutta, 2013;Huber and DiGabriele, 2014), calls for regulating its activities (Huber, 2013), its role in crime discovery and prevention in the business world (Lokanan, 2014;Samuel et al, 2013;Reddy and Sebastin, 2012;Clements and Shawver, 2011;Carnes and Gierlasinski, 2001;Dutta, 2013), its ability in restoring confidence and credibility in financial reporting activities and accordingly enhancing the effectiveness of corporate governance (Bhasin, 2013), higher education involvement through either offering degrees in forensic accounting (e.g., Caliyurt and Crowther, 2006;Welsh and Hannis, 2011;Seda and Kramer, 2009) or just some courses on forensic accounting (e.g., Rezaee and Burton, 1997), and its role in injecting more forensic skills in auditing through, for example, a merger of what could be regarded as common ground between auditing with forensic accounting (DiGabriele, 2009). …”

The role of accounting literature and professional training in enhancing common life-based characteristics held by a forensic accountant (an empirical investigation)

“…There has been an increasing emphasis in the accounting literature on a justified growing demand for forensic accounting services (e.g., Carnes and Gierlasinski, 2001;Rasmussen and Leauannae, 2004;Heitger and Heitger, 2008;Seda and Kramer, 2009;Bressler, 2011;Stone and Miller, 2012;Huber, 2012Huber, , 2013Bhasin, 2013;Salleh and Ab Aziz, 2014). This emphasis is attributed to the importance of forensic accounting and based on many indications such as recognising it as a discipline (Mitric et al, 2012;Salleh and Ab Aziz, 2014) or a sub-discipline (Stone and Miller, 2012), giving it the status of a profession (Renzhoua, 2011;Huber, 2012;Dutta, 2013;Huber and DiGabriele, 2014), calls for regulating its activities (Huber, 2013), its role in crime discovery and prevention in the business world (Lokanan, 2014;Samuel et al, 2013;Reddy and Sebastin, 2012;Clements and Shawver, 2011;Carnes and Gierlasinski, 2001;Dutta, 2013), its ability in restoring confidence and credibility in financial reporting activities and accordingly enhancing the effectiveness of corporate governance (Bhasin, 2013), higher education involvement through either offering degrees in forensic accounting (e.g., Caliyurt and Crowther, 2006;Welsh and Hannis, 2011;Seda and Kramer, 2009) or just some courses on forensic accounting (e.g., Rezaee and Burton, 1997), and its role in injecting more forensic skills in auditing through, for example, a merger of what could be regarded as common ground between auditing with forensic accounting (DiGabriele, 2009). This growing emphasis on the demand for forensic accounting is accompanied by a growing academic interest in formulating, developing and crystallising various subject matters of forensic accounting.…”