The story of this book began more than two years ago. It all started with
the search for a double correspondence: create a cohesive editorship team
and address a common and passionate topic in education, relevant enough
to fill an existing gap and to interest teachers, researchers, students and
professionals. We feel privileged to have met them both.
The combination of education, ethics and accounting came to us in a
very spontaneous way. In fact, and as teachers at an accounting higher
education institution, we feel the importance of providing students with
ethics education. So, it was settled: accounting ethics education was the
way. The next step led us to Routledge and to a proposal that was strong
enough to attract several recognized authors and top experts in their
fields. In fact, we had to split our original proposal in two in order to
accommodate them all: this book is the first part of this endeavor and we
are already working on the second book.
This book comprehends a careful reflection on what brought us here
and what lies ahead and, we believe, meets all the conditions to be an
essential and useful reference in the field. It will not make teachers,
researchers, students or professionals more ethical, nor will it tell them
how to judge others’ behavior. Rather, its goal is to help them understand
how ethics can be taught to accounting students and how they should
be motivated to act ethically. If students achieve this, the accounting
profession will be enriched and dignified, and they will excel at being
responsible professionals with high technical standards and superior
ethical sensibility.