CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Accounting ethics has a very important role to play moulding and enhancing the students performance in tertiary institutions in Nigeria. As a measurement of reporting student performance, ethics tends to examine, analyses and evaluate students behavior and give detailed important about different students performance. (Akpekon, 2017). The task of accounting ethics therefore is to examine students performance in relation to the accounting ethics principles as to see whether students behaviour conforms with lay down rules, principles or norms. The American Accounting Association (AAA 1986) states that the function of accounting is to provide qualitative information, primarily financial in nature, about economic entities that is intended to be useful in economic decisions. This information is provided by accounting ethics which influence students performance in any society. The need for accounting therefore arose in response to the desire to make judicious use of scarce resources, accumulate wealth and produce high quality of goods and services in a competitive economy. To perform these roles, accountants are needed both in number and in quality and this is a function of the level of accounting education available (Armstrong, 2010).
An appropriate level of accounting must embrace the development of the character of the aspiring accountant in such a manner as to engender in him or her a strong moral code; a sense of discretion; an almost total commitment to the confidentiality of information or data established as a result of work carried out; an enquiry and analytical mind consistent with providing clients with high standards of professional services; an ability to assess data and situations and to prepare reports in such a way as to impress upon users of accounting services that their problems have been addressed in ways consistent with the highest ideals of a true professional, a sense of dress and carriage designed to develop a confidence in the competence and probity of the practitioners within the profession (Kimmel,1995; Maher,2000;Ravenscro & Williams, 2003). Recently, there have been growing criticisms against the accountants in public and business on questionable acts. Users of the services of accountants want to receive efficient and reliable service from such accountant who they regard as experts. In consulting, a set of accounts users want to be sure that the accounts convey a true and fair view of the financial position of a company, in other words, they are concerned about competence and standards. Investors in Nigeria have lost several billions of dollars through the collusion of accountants and external auditors with companies’ management and directors to falsify and deliberately overstate companies’ accounts Bakre (2007).
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