The moral competence of Portuguese accounting students

Abstract

Moral Competence is understood as a capacity or ability to solve problems and/or conflicts, using inner principles to deliberate and discuss the conflicts, instead of using violence or deceit. This paper uses Georg Linds’ Moral Competence Test (MCT) to assess the moral competence of accounting students in a public higher education institution. In addition, implements a new dilemma – Accountant’s dilemma – designed for the accounting domain. Samples were collected in four consecutive years, before and after teaching classes with subjects in the area of Ethics and Deontology for a total of 494 responses. The MCT reached values between 18.44 and 25.80 considering all data. However, when measuring moral competence before and after the teaching of a course unit on ethics and deontology, we have concluded that, in almost all cases, the MCT decreased after the classes, opening room for further research to understand the causes of this behavior.