Relationship between Emotional Intelligence, Ethical Climates and Ethical Values of Companies and Auditor’s Ethical Judgment

Evolution of the audit profession and its ability to gain public trust will depend on compliance with code of professional ethics. Fraudulent activities indicate the weakness of the ruling ethical values in work and training environment. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence, ethical climates and ethical values of companies and auditor’s ethical judgment.

The present study is a descriptive-correlational research. The statistical population consisted of member auditors of Iranian Association of Certified Public Accountants (IACPA) who work in audit institutions in Tehran and other cities, among which 145 subjects were selected as research sample through stratified sampling. The tool used in this study was a questionnaire. The collected data was analyzed in SPSS v.21 (a statistical software) through Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and Multiple Regression.

Results show that emotional intelligence, ethical values and professional, instrumental and independent ethical climates are significantly associated with auditor’s ethical judgment.

Given the relationship of emotional intelligence, ethical climates and ethical values of firms with auditor’s ethical judgment and because audit professional judgments have an effect on individuals informed decision-makings, certified accountants of the association are required to play their professional role as ethical representatives of the society.