Journal of Business Ethics Education 4: 5-26. © 2007, Senate Hall Academic Publishing. Teaching Ethics and Accreditation: Faculty Competence, Methods and Assessment Kathy Lund Dean 1 Idaho State University, USA Jeri Mullins Beggs Illinois State University, USA Charles J. Fornaciari Florida Gulf Coast University, USA Abstract. New standards adopted by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB) stress business curriculum-wide learning objectives, of which ethics is a critical part. “Knowledge and skills” in ethical responsibilities are required as part of institutional accreditation. An exploratory study offers insight into ethics integration, perceived comfort in teaching ethics, and methods used. The main tension presented balances calls for ethics across business curricula with the assertion that ethics instruction, in the hands of an untrained professor, may do more damage than good. Results suggest that while faculty include ethics in their courses, only slightly more than half have received some kind of ethics training. We also explore ethics pedagogies and found differences between methods respondents used in the classroom and desired learning methods for themselves. We offer insights about and possible explanations for the gaps we found in our study, contextualizing them in new literature. We finish with a brief discussion of how our findings impact accreditation assessment. Keywords: ethics, pedagogy, ethics across the curriculum, assurance of learning, AACSB, accreditation. 1. Introduction Since renewing standards with an increased emphasis on ethics education in April 2003, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB) has maintained that ethics topics must be part of both undergraduate and graduate curricula. Teaching ethics is positioned among the list of topical 1. A version of this paper was presented at the fourteenth annual Institute of Behavioral and Applied Management (IBAM ) conference, 5-7 October 2006 (Memphis, USA) and appeared in shortened form in its Conference Proceedings. This research was supported by an Idaho State University FRC grant #918. The authors would also like to thank Susan Hooks for her invaluable research assistance. A licence has been granted to the author(s) to make printed copies of the paper for personal use only. Apart from these licenced copies, none of the material protected by the copyright notice can be reproduced or used in any form either electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any other information recording or retrieval system, without prior written permission from the owner(s) of the copyright. © 2007, Senate Hall Academic Publishing.