The results of this study are useful for understanding what factors are influential in the moral development of CPAs. Practitioners should consider the results of this study when making hiring and promotion decisions. Results may also be informative to the development of ethical training programs.

Abdolmohammadi, M. J. and D. L. Ariail. 2009. A Test of the Selection-Socialization Theory in Moral Reasoning of CPAs in Industry Practice. Behavioral Research in Accounting 21 (2): 1-12.

Overall, having a clear understanding of ethical environment perception is important because it shapes behavior, influences views of reality, and identifies the relative strengths and weaknesses of ethical environments. The results from this study suggests organizations in industry may need to place an additional emphasis on developing and strengthening their ethical environments. They can accomplish this goal by providing ethics training, incentivizing ethical behavior, and having an ethical leadership style.

Bobek, Donna D., D. W. Dalton, B. E. Duaghterty, A. M. Hangeman, and R. R. Radtke.2017. “An Investigation of Ethical Environments of CPAs: Public Accounting versus Industry”. Behavioral Research in Accounting 29.1 (2017): 43.

http://commons.aaahq.org/groups/e5075f0eec/summary

The results of this study are important for understanding the implications of previous studies which have used the Defining Issues Test (DIT) or its later version the DIT-2 to measure the ethical reasoning and moral development of CPAs. The authors note that determining whether there is a true correlation between political orientation and the DIT P score is an intriguing debate that remains unsettled. The authors suggest that political belief should not be ignored and should be considered by researchers and included as a control variable in future studies to prevent misleading results.

Bailey, C. D., T. J. Phillips and S. B. Scofield. 2005. Does “Political Bias” in the DIT or DIT-2 Threaten Validity in Studies of CPAs? Behavioral Research in Accounting 17 (1): 23-42.

The findings of this paper are of importance for firms that are interested in accountants’ ethical and moral judgment. This paper provides a thorough and broad review on the usefulness of the Defining Issues Test (DIT). In addition, the authors propose a theoretical framework for research using the DIT. The authors suggest that ethical research should consider more components of ethical issues, such as moral sensitivity, moral judgment, moral motivation, and moral character. These findings and suggestions can help accounting firms in improving the ethical performance of accountants.

Bailey, C. D., I. Scott, and S. J. Thoma.  2010.  Revitalizing Accounting Ethics Research in the Neo-Kohlbergian Framework: Putting the DIT into Perspective. Behavioral Research in Accounting 22 (2): 1-26.

The results of this study show that auditors in a negative mood performed better in a hypothesis generation task than did auditors in a positive mood. On the other hand, auditors in a positive mood made more ethical judgments on both a sample-size and inventory write-off ethical dilemma. The study increases our understanding of the effects of mood on auditors’ ethical and professional judgments. The results of this study may be helpful to audit firms in structuring their ethical policies and procedures and developing training programs. In addition, the influence of mood on hypothesis generation may be of particular concern considering the importance of analytical procedures to the audit process.

Cianci, A.M. and J.L. Bierstaker. 2009.  The impact of positive and negative mood on the hypothesis generation and ethical judgments of auditors. Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory 28 (2): 119-144.