The achievement of the ethical goals of ethics and professional behavior of certified public accountants in Iran based on structuralism ethical schools (using Delphi-fuzzy technique)

Accountants will be reliable and trustworthy when they perform their professional services in accordance with the code of professional conduct. Accountants must also have honesty, realism, independence and impartiality in addition to knowledge, skills and experience. The aim of the present study is to investigate the achievement of ethical goals of ethics and professional behavior of Iranian certified public accountants based on structuralism ethical schools via Delphi-fuzzy technique. To do so, a number of accounting experts, professors and members of the Iranian Society of Certified Public Accountants (N=23) participated in the research. A Likert-scale questionnaire was applied for the collection of data. Then, SPSS software was employed for summarizing and analyzing the collected data and Matlab software was used to analyze the fuzzy logic. Findings of the present action research reveal that the compilers of ethics and the profession of certified public accounting in Iran have a clear tendency to exert the structuralism schools perspectives; moreover, the goals of structuralism ethical perspective are more prominent in the context of ethics and professional conduct of certified public accountants in Iran. Finally, the results of the study indicate that a large part of the ethical components in the ethics and professional conduct of Iranian accountants comprises the Ethical Components of Structuralism Schools, including accountability, transparency, confidentiality, and realism.