By Ann-Christine Frandsen, Nick Bailey, Wafa Ben Khaled, James Brackley, Keith Hoskin, Elisavet Mantzari, Gabriela Rozenfeld, Madlen Sobkowiak, Ian Thomson and Idlan Zakaria.
Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham
In an era of fraud, corruption, sustainability, climate change and challenges what can Improvised Role Play do for HE students learning Accounting and Finance professional ethics?
Accountancy is a profession with a charter and special responsibilities. They are to serve both the public interest and their clients. This profession is faced with ethical dilemmas in a world of high complexity, uncertainty including the climate crisis. Many decisions and judgments pass through the lens of accounting, financial and non-financial. Learning to identify ethical challenges in action is key, that is, reflection in action, and not when it is too late.
“…it might take them [students or trainees] 10 years before they can see and recognise some ethical challenges”
Former Charted Accountant
Ethical challenges include how to address the constant sewage into our rivers and waterways, how to prevent another pandemic and access to PPE and vaccine, to solve the issue of crumbling hospitals and schools built with RAAC cement, how to address the negative impact on use of money laundering and transfer pricing by large corporations to avoid tax where they operate in favour of tax havens. These practices are not set in stone and can be changed. They rest on political decisions and professional expertise. Hence, the profession needs people with diverse background from across around the globe based on equal opportunities and integration in work-life.
The MSc Accounting and Finance programme here at Birmingham has a large international student cohort and has included a core professional ethics module since 2018. This module features improvised role play, with a strong emphasis on improvisation. A key aim has been to help students shift from seeking the ‘right answer’ to engaging in reflection on their actions, both during and after tasks, as described by Schon (1991). The emphasis is on learning to ask the right questions, rather than simply producing correct answers.
“After this lecture I would rather say ‘I need to think about that’, that the thoughts are very important when you face a dilemma. You need to think about what others might think sometimes. Whatever the choice, you might hurt some people’s interests, so we learnt to try to weigh these up and try to minimise the damage and make the right collective decision”
Student, group interview
Improvised Role Play is such technique for experiencing ‘real life’ ethical dilemmas, thereby promoting reflection, and self-viewing. As such it can open another up for questions, trying out new ideas – ‘thinking otherwise’. This requires two things: a safe space for experimenting, free from judging eyes and numerical gradings and eliminating students ‘fear of failure’.
“Role play is really helpful, because we can act out as ourselves in a kind of real situation to see what is our real reaction to that dilemma”
Student, group interview
The research carried out on improvised Role Play found how thought-provoking improvised role play delivered and facilitated by leadership/professional actors can be for students. Students were confronted with a real-life ethical dilemma drawing on BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. The students were allocated into groups of three and given two basic scenes with three roles in each, all played by each student. One scene was about whether buying cement of less quality to prevent blow out or not. Second, after the disaster, which resulted in many human, environmental, and wildlife casualties, the CEO is about to face the world’s press. What should they say? This was a space free to experiment with self-imposed characters roles along with peers and where the outcome was unknown while at same time co-produced. After each role played, they were asked to reflect on what happened.
“Without a doubt, what was successful about it was that it didn’t take them long to immerse themselves in it. They totally threw themselves at it, pretty much as I would expect enthusiastic drama students to go at it, which was both a relief. That was a major success”
Professional Facilitator
Our research concludes the usefulness of Improvised Role Play for students who are soon ready for work life. It also presents how a learning ‘framework’ could help and support students allowing ‘thinking otherwise’ and a possible seed for ‘ethical lift’ as encouraged after the 2008 financial crisis by Mark Carney (2016, BoE). This kind of learning setup powerfully complements CPD, helping professionals spot and reflect on ethical dilemmas in the moment, not after it’s too late.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Birmingham.