Developing Morally Competent Accountants: Institutionalizing the Moral Grade Point Average (MGPA)

Abstract

The rash financial scandals that have occurred over the last two decades have truly damaged the credibility of accountants all over the world. One way that has been proposed to restore the accountants’ damaged reputation is that universities provide the right ethical climate produce morally competent accountants to better deal with the various ethical dilemmas present in the accounting workplace. For the Muslim accounting student, Islamic universities are in prime positions to fulfil this crucial objective of training him or her to become an accounting professional who follows the commands of Almighty Allah in discharging all his duties. The problem is that critical issue of imbuing moral values amongst these students is not actually measured by Islamic universities; it is only assumed. Without actually measuring the moral competencies of these students, this paper argues that Islamic universities are remiss in fulfilling their moral obligations as stated by their various mission statements. More importantly, the accounting lecturers and administrators at these universities will be held accountable by Almighty Allah regarding the extent to which they have fulfilled their obligations towards these accounting students. In order to make the issue of moral competence of equal importance with technical accounting competence, and more importantly to be able to successfully fulfil their accountability to Allah, it was suggested that Islamic universities institutionalize the issue of moral competency amongst accounting students by introducing the Moral Grade Point Average (MPGA). A scenario-based instrument called the Muslim Accountant Moral Competency Test, MAMOC, was developed through extensive consultations with Islamic accounting scholars to aid Islamic universities in their quest to introduce the MGPA. MAMOC has 9 ethical scenarios which are to measure 9 attributes of a morally competent Muslim accountant. A pilot test proved the clarity of the instrument, and the reliability of the scoring system with an Intra-Class correlation coefficient of 0.943.