The SAICA syllabus for ethics : does it all add up?

Abstract

The South African Institute for Chartered Accountants (SAICA) recently (2005) announced guidelines for a syllabus for Ethics that is to be included in the undergraduate studies of students studying towards the Chartered Accountant (CA) qualification. The purpose of this paper is to make a critical comparison between the objectives and the outcomes of the SAICA Ethics syllabus to determine whether the proposed outcomes match the proposed objectives. A teaching-learning competency framework for applied ethics will be introduced first, to provide a theoretical framework within which the stated comparison between the proposed objectives and outcomes of the Ethics syllabus can be carried out.