The Role of Social Conservatism in the Slippage of Professional Ethics: A Comparative Comparison of the Public and Private Sectors of the Auditing Profession

Commitment to the code of professional conduct is necessary for the audit profession. Failure to comply with it will reduce the trust of the society and the credibility of the audit profession. The purpose of the current research is to investigate the relationship between social conservatism and the slippage of the auditor's professional ethics.

The research method is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-correlational in terms of nature. The studied statistical population includes auditors working in audit institutions, members of the public accountants' society and audit organization. 320 people were selected as a sample using the random cluster sampling method from auditors working in audit institutions, members of the public accountants' society and the audit organization. The research tool is a questionnaire. SPSS software was used for data analysis.

The results show that only in the private sector, social conservatism has a significant and negative relationship with auditors' slippage in professional ethics. Also, in the private sector, gender, education, work experience and job rank variables have no significant relationship with slippage in professional ethics at the 95% confidence level. But in the public sector, among the mentioned variables, only gender and work experience have a significant relationship with slippage in professional ethics.

Based on the findings of this research, traditional and conservative values can increase independence and audit quality as a tool to strengthen ethics in this profession. In this case, the policy makers of the audit profession can encourage auditors to comply with ethics as much as possible, through training and also monitoring the implementation of ethical codes.