Recent business and accounting scandals (e.g., Enron, WorldCom, Merck, Xerox…etc.) and the related downfall of the world’s largest public accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, have crumbled the public’s confidence in the honesty and ethical standards of Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) (Coleman, Kreuze, & Langsam, 2004). Bad moral judgments and unethical decision-making appear to have been at the core of these immoral behaviors. With the goal of regaining and maintaining public trust in the profession’s honesty and ethics, the CPAs must adhere to high levels of moral behavior. Hence, the underlying problem concerns the CPAs’ need for a high level of public trust, and the concomitant recent diminution of this trust in the face of accounting scandals. In focusing on individuals’ ethical behavior, there is a need to understand their current state of moral development and the way individuals resolve ethical dilemmas. Results indicated that there is a strong correlation existed between ethical intention and moral-development. Results also indicated that no correlation existed between moral development and ethical awareness, except in one of the vignettes of the bank loan to friends. The findings do not support there is a relationship between moral development and the selected demographic variables. Ethical decision-making also was found to be related to gender, educational level and ethics training. Yet age and professional level did not have significant influence in the CPAs’ ethical decision-making process.
