Factors that influence ethical judgement of accounting students at UiTM Machang / Nur Zalifah Rasdi

Unethical practices have caused numerous accounting scandals. The ability to make ethical judgments is a significant challenge that accounting professionals and scholars today must address. Many wonder why accountants continue to make unethical judgments in the wake of repeated accounting crises. 57.4% of Malaysian students in public universities have admitted to having participated in academic dishonesty. Additionally, the study indicated that those who committed academic dishonesty are not sensitive to their behaviour. The objective of this study is to investigate the influence of organizational ethical culture, deontological evaluation, teleological evaluation and ethical sensitivity on the ethical judgments of accounting students at UiTM Machang. Data were collected to examine hypotheses and address the study's research questions. The survey method was employed for data collection in this study. The researcher distributed the questionnaire to the appropriate respondents. The respondents are given the questionnaire personally by WhatsApp, email or Google Forms. The IBM SPSS statistics version 27 database was used to translate the participant responses for analysis. Among the four developed hypotheses, only H1, H2 and H4 are supported by hypothesis testing while H3 is not supported. Although one hypothesis result is not supported, the relationship between organisational ethical culture, deontological evaluation, teleological evaluation, and ethical sensitivity, according to Hunt and Vitell’s Theory, has a significant relationship with ethical judgment among accounting students. The findings indicate that the ethical judgment of accounting students at UiTM Machang can be influenced by organizational ethical culture, deontological evaluation and ethical sensitivity and cannot be influenced by teleological evaluation. These give knowledgeable insights to researchers, authorities and related parties about the significance of developing a strong ethical awareness by educating students and academic institutions on the rules-based system and the effects of an ethical judgment of numerous stakeholders.