An Analysis of Factors Affecting the Professionalism of Public Accountants: Perceptions of Accounting Students (Survey of Accounting Study Program Students)

Abstract

The profession should pay more attention to the professional ethics and morals that form the basis of how they do their work. The accountant must fully adhere to a set of moral and ethical standards because they are crucial for the execution of their task. This study attempts to ascertain accounting students’ perceptions of how they comprehend the Financial Accounting Standards (SAK) and Moral Ethics of Professional Public Accountants (SPAP) on the Professionalism of Public Accountants. In order for all members of the profession to carry out their duties to the best standards possible, it is intended that the results of this study would reveal the respondents’ level of moral ethics comprehension. The population in this study consisted of 98 accounting students who had undergone auditing/auditing accounting courses, 50 from the economics faculty of the Unisri Accounting study program and 48 from the economics faculty of the accounting study program at Muhammadiyah University of Surakarta. While the sampling approach utilized is judgment sampling or taking research samples based on considerations, such as students who have attended auditing courses. According to the panel’s findings, students from the economics department specializing in accounting believe that moral and ethical forces influence the professionalism of public accountants in carrying out their profession. However, ethics and morality are not sufficient in and of itself; they must be combined with good comprehension, competence, and accountability in understanding public accounting professional standards (SPAP) and financial accounting standards (SAK). It is proved that ethics and morals affect the professionalism of public accountants with a significance value of 0.41, while the understanding of public accounting professional standards has effect on the variable of public accounting professionalism with a significance value of 0.36 and the variable of understanding of financial accounting standards on the professionalism of public accountants with a significance value of 0.14. Thus, simultaneously, it shows that these three variables have an effect on the professionalism of public accountants.