Raising students’ ethical sensitivity with a value relevance approach

This paper introduces a new approach to raising students’ ethical sensitivity. This new “Value Relevance Approach” (VRA) employs active instructional techniques to demonstrate the costs (benefits) associated with acting in an unethical (ethical) manner. Using a within and between subjects, pre/post-test design, we (1) assess the effectiveness of the VRA in affecting students’ ethical sensitivity and (2) compare the effectiveness of the VRA in affecting students’ ethical sensitivity to that of a traditional learning approach (TLA). The results indicate that ethical sensitivity improves for subjects in the VRA condition and also improves to a greater extent than for subjects in the TLA condition, suggesting that the VRA is more effective than a TLA in promoting ethical sensitivity among students.