Provide a model of auditors' professional ethics behaviour with emphasis on ethical climate using interpretive structural modelling from the professional experts’ perspective

Many audit failures are due to ethical slips and unethical behaviours, and auditors’ understanding of the ethical climate can affect auditors’ behaviour and attitudes. The purpose of this study is to provide a model of auditors’ professional ethics behaviour with emphasis on the ethical climate and it has been conducted based on two qualitative and quantitative approaches by selecting 10 experts from the community of certified public accountants through purposive sampling. In the first part, we identified the indicators using library studies and specialized interviewing. Theme analysis and fuzzy Delphi technique were applied to analyse the qualitative data and screen the indicators respectively. In the next step, a model was developed using the quantitative method of ISM. According to our findings, the most fundamental constructs influencing auditors’ professional ethics are ethical climate, economic conditions, social culture, ethical ideology, organizational structure, management and leadership, policy and policy-making, monitoring and evaluation, skills and potentials, personal characteristics, recruitment and retention, Professional commitments and job ethics.Accordingly, the audit organization can create and develop an ethical climate and use other identified factors to add more dynamism to the auditors’ professional ethics, improve ethical and professional standards and enhance the auditors’ capabilities and public trust.