Novo código de ética profissional e atitudes éticas: percepção dos profissionais contábeis

Abstract

Discussions about ethical conduct, carried out by accounting professionals within the scope of their activity, have become present in the literature and news involving accounting scandals. Therefore, acting ethically becomes important for these professionals, since they are providers of information within the business environment which are necessary in decision making. For this reason, it is essential that the accountant values ethical conduct and attitudes in the development of his work. To this end, there is a Code of Ethics, a document that guides accounting professionals through rules and procedures in carrying out their activities correctly and which, in 2019, underwent an update to meet and adapt to the job market in the face of transformations that have been ccurring in society and in the corporate environment. Therefore, this study aimed at analyzing the perception of accounting professionals of different ethical attitudes in relation to the new code of professional ethics in the Accounting Sciences course of two Public Universities in Paraná. For data collection, a questionnaire was applied, in which respondents should indicate their degree of agreement with the question presented, using a Likert scale adapted from 07 levels. 105 valid responses were obtained and data analysis was performed using statistical techniques and non-parametric Mann-Whitney (MW) and Kruskal-Wallis (KW) tests using the Bonferroni correction. The results of the study demonstrated that accounting professionals have ethical attitudes in decision making when faced with ethical dilemmas and agreed with the items that were included in the new standard and with the wording of the items that ended up being excluded from the New Code of Ethics. Regarding to ethical attitudes, it was identified that the individual factors that influenced ethical attitudes are female accounting professionals, who do not have another degree, without an employment relationship, who studied ethics, aged between 21 and 22 years and professionals who are in the fourth year of the course. Regarding the perception of changes in the new code of ethics, the highest levels of agreement in the face of changes in the new code, were influenced by individual factors related to female gender and having attended the discipline of ethics. It is also noteworthy that the different levels of ethical attitudes promoted differences in view of the perception of agreement with the changes in the new code of ethics, in which the more ethical accounting professionals agreed more with the changes and the less ethical professionals agreed with less intensity changes in the new code of ethics. Thus, it is possible to conclude that accounting professionals tend to act ethically in their decision-making process and guided by a new Code of Ethics.