Teaching ethics: The utility of the CPA code

Teaching professional ethics can take two very different forms, reflecting different fundamental assumptions about ethical rules, and leading to different problem-solving strategies in professional life. In this article I outline and contrast the two approaches, which I call the overriding principle approach and the moral dilemma approach. The first reifies ethical principles and underpins them with rationales drawn from moral philosophy. The second sees principles as templates of default options, which may or may not fit the facts of the case and the context in which a decision must be made. In the moral dilemma approach, for instance, there is always some circumstance in which following a particular moral rule would produce the wrong result. The CPA Code of Ethics has different advantages and disadvantages for teaching professional ethics depending on one's fundamental approach. Although its rhetoric and its ordering of rules seems to reflect the overriding principle approach, I argue that the Code is actually more relevant to the moral dilemma approach.