Reflecting on My Career as an Accounting Professor, Educator and Researcher
I have been reflecting on my past accomplishments and current views of the state of the accounting profession for a while now, a function of getting older I suppose. In this blog, I will share some of my experiences and thoughts during my lifetime and observations that come with it. I hope it will provide guidance for young accountants entering academia and the accounting profession.
My Interest in Accounting Ethics
My interest in ethics first started about 40 years ago when I took a sabbatical leave from teaching at San Francisco State University. I decided to use my sabbatical to interview some accounting professionals about their most difficult situations and how they were resolved. I was fortunate to find many such professionals with the help of the California Society of CPAs, that facilitated these discussions. The end product of my sabbatical was to develop cases in accounting ethics that could be used to teach ethics to accounting students. My favorite case (“Giles and Regas”) was a story of a young female staff member of a firm who engaged in a dating relationship with someone of higher rank at that firm–the partner-in-charge of the engagement.
I presented my work at the Western Regional Meeting of the American Accounting Association in 1986. As luck would have it, an associate editor from Random House was in the audience and approached me at the conclusion of the program to see if I’d be interested in turning my cases into an accounting ethics casebook, and I jumped at the opportunity. About 40 years ago, my first accounting ethics textbook was published. I revised the book twice and started to become noticed by the academy.
Ethical Obligations and Decision Making: Text and Cases
Shortly thereafter, Random House was acquired by McGraw Hill, my current publisher. The first edition of my textbook with this publisher was in 1996. It was significantly expanded to include text material as well as cases. The issues addressed include both internal reporting, including culture, corporate governance, and whistleblowing, as well as external financial reporting including ethics standards, fraud in financial statements, whistleblowing, earnings management and more. Ethical Obligations and Decision Making: Text and Cases has become the leader in the field of accounting ethics textbooks. More than 100 colleges and universities use it in whole or in part. In the early 2000s, universities expanded accounting ethics education largely because of accounting frauds at Enron, WorldCom and dozens of other companies. Colleges and universities were looking for such a textbook to teach accounting ethics, a subject matter that had been expanding because of the 150-hour educational requirement to be a CPA.
The book has been quite successful and is in its 7th edition, now referred to as 2025 Release because of the advent of the digital product. Over 75% of book sales come from digital adoptions.
150-Hour Requirement
The event that will likely lead to a reduction in standalone accounting ethics courses, unfortunately, is that virtually all states have now created or will create an alternative to the 150-hour requirement to be a CPA, typically by gaining an extra year of practice. The need for the alternative option to become certified has been driven by pipeline limitations in students entering the accounting profession. We learned that students do not want to pay for the extra 30 units, and CPA firms really weren’t requiring the extra education for entry-level positions.
Looking back, virtually all states had required 150-units to be certified; however, business students started navigating to fields such as information technology, information systems and financial management. The reason for the shift has been the added cost of paying for 30-units above the traditional 120 units to earn a bachelor’s degree. Only time will tell whether student interest in accounting as a concentration regains its prominence as the leader in majors for all business programs. I think it will so long as accounting departments develop courses to meet the changing needs of clients and firms develop training programs to meet that need.
Service to Academe
I love writing papers about ethical issues facing business and accounting. My first publication, which carved out a reputation for me as an ethics expert, was “Virtue Ethics and Accounting Education” published in Issues in Accounting Education in 1995. That paper led to a stream of published papers by academics on the intersection between character, virtue ethics, accounting education, and accounting practice.
Upon becoming a senior at 65-years-of age, I started to think of retirement. I have accomplished a great deal during my academic career and really do not have a lot to prove. Still, the challenge of writing and publishing papers keeps me going. I have published over 40 papers in the field of ethics. I have been fortunate to have been interviewed and quoted in many stories about accounting ethics, business ethics, and even political ethics. I have developed a successful blog under the name “Ethics Sage.” My blog has been well received and is a joy to write.
I was fortunate to teach at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo from 2006-2016. Cal Poly is an exceptional university, known for its education in engineering and architecture. Based on my experiences, I would add business and accounting to the areas where a stand-out education can inform professional practice. I love their motto “Learn by Doing.” By the way, Victor Glover is the Cal Poly graduate who became a NASA astronaut. He graduated in 1999 with a degree in General Engineering and has made significant contributions to space exploration, including piloting the recent Artemis II mission to the moon.
Post retirement, I have turned my attention to service. The field of accounting education has been good to me. I decided to give back to accounting education and increase my activities with the Public Interest, Ethics and Sustainability (PIES) Section of the American Accounting Association (AAA). The Section has supported my work over the years, and I am deeply in debt to the AAA for that. To show my thankfulness in a tangible way, I have funded the “Excellence in Accounting Ethics Education” Award that is given out annually by the PIES.
The PIES has also recognized my work. I received the “Accounting Exemplar” award in 2015 and the “Distinguished Service” Award in 2024.
Reflections on the Accounting Profession
Accounting is an honorable profession, being relied upon by clients for a myriad of professional services and for being trustworthy. However, it’s become somewhat fashionable to criticize the profession for a lack of independence and allowing clients to call the shots rather than the accounting professional. This occurs, in part, because of the competition for professional services.
A Gallup Poll released on May 3, 2026, shows that accountants rank seventh out of 21 professions in honesty and ethics, trailing all healthcare professions and teachers, and clustering near other mid-tier trust occupations.
There has been a decrease in the ranking and overall percentage rating on ethics and honesty recently. I attribute this to the fact that professional services are expanding more rapidly than accounting education and training. It can’t keep up. Mistakes are made. Add to that the pressure imposed by CFOs and CEOs who seek maximum profits, and you have the perfect storm leading to the decline. One example is that unique entities have been established during the past dozen years, such as special purpose acquisitions (SPAs). These are companies created specifically to raise capital through an IPO for the purpose of acquiring an existing company. The transactions can be complex, and it could be that firms have not adequately trained their staff to handle the technical needs, judgment calls, and making sure the independence standard is met. Then there are the challenges that result from expansions in state-of-the-art fields which interact with providing professional services, such as technology and crypto currency transactions. These changes have, in part, created a talent gap between the knowledge and training needed to handle emerging clients’ needs and the abilities of accounting graduates and professionals, especially in their early years. In short, accounting education and practice has not caught up with the knowledge and training needed to handle such transactions.
Conclusions
I believe that accounting firms will close the gap between learning and practice over time. They have too much to lose by not doing so. This requires, among other things, for academe to update their curricula to meet the demands of a changing workplace. As I have observed before in my blogs, change in the academy occurs slowly.
I am concerned about the decline in ethics in all fields of practice, whether business ethics, accounting ethics, government ethics, political ethics and the like. This decline in ethics has infected all segments of society, and accounting is no different.
Finally, accounting students need to commit themselves to ethical behavior so that they can help to change the culture of those firms that all-too-often give in to client pressure. Accounting professionals must act in the public interest, and that means to be ethical and honest in everything they do so that clients can continue to call on them for current and future service needs.
Blog posted by Steven Mintz, PhD, on May 4, 2026. Visit Steve’s website to learn more about his activities.