Accountants for the 21st Century, where are you? A five-year study of accounting students’ personality preferences

There are many problems and possibilities confronting the accounting profession as a discipline. Accounting in the present form maybe a dying art, perhaps we are not attracting and retaining what the accounting profession needs, or not giving the students enrolled the opportunity to develop the skills required. Whatever the reason is a skills mismatch is occurring. It is also facing an ethical crisis, which is reflected in many of the corporate collapses we are witnessing. We have seen Enron, Onetel, Worldcom, Xerox and HIH, to name a few.This paper examines these trends using personality theory as adopted from the discipline of psychology. We find over a five-year period using the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) a consistently high STJ preference of 35–46% exists which is much greater than the US national average of 19%. We need a better mix of personality NOW.