Factors Affecting Iranian Certified Public Accountant's Ethical Decision Making

Due to the importance of Certified Public Accountants’ ethical decision m aking in advancing any specific profession, it is important to find out what possible factors may affect their ethical values. In other words, the purpose of this study was to investigate what factors Certified Public Accountants may think would affect their decision making. A total of 56 subjects were selected through a snow-ball sampling from IranianCertified Public Accountants’ population. The snow-ball sampling is mostly recommended for this kind of study. Interview was used as an instrument to collect data from the subjects regarding their ethical values. A checklist for interview was constructed based mostly on literature and on professional accounting experts’ point of views. The reliability of internal consistency coefficient of the instrument was reported to be significant (0.90). Professional accounting experts rated the logical validity of the instrument very satisfactory. The thematic analytical method (them method) was used to analyze the data. Based on the findings of the study, it was found that Law and Regulations, CPA Personal Characteristics, Auditing Job Characteristics and Organization Inception Characteristics were among the most important factors that may affect Certified Public Accountants’ ethical values. CPA Personal Characteristics, Auditing Job Characteristics and Organization Inception along with Law and Regulations are among factors that CPAs consider them important in their ethical decision making. Therefore, Iranian Association of Certified Public Accountants and auditing institutes can use them to improve planning and advance their efficiency and accountability.