Cognitive approach to understand the impact of conflict of interests on accounting professionals’ decision-making behaviour

This paper adopts a cognitive approach, by integrating social cognitive theory and throughput model, for examining the process through which conflict of interests affects the accounting professionals’ decision-making behaviour. The model has been tested by conducting a quasi-experiment with 105 professionals from the Big Four accounting firms in the UK. The low positive outcome expectancy of compliant decision-making, high perceived difficulty in making compliant decisions and less ethical judgements are evidenced to be the situational cognitive predictors, and high propensity to morally disengage the dispositional cognitive predictor of the likelihood of deviant decision-making behaviour. The proposed cognitive approach provides a novel perspective for investigating decision-making behaviour in situations involving the conflict of interests. To facilitate effective management of conflict of interests, this study suggests implementing behavioural interventions for strengthening the accounting professionals’ independence in fact.