In 2005, Dellaportas et al. (p.xvii) identified that accountants and other business professionals are often criticized for lacking the ethical sensitivity to recognize ethical dilemmas when they arise. They said these professionals focused too much on technical issues and neglected the moral dimension. Dellaportas et al. concluded that it is essential that students be sensitive to the moral components of seemingly technical issues. There are many ethical theories that students can learn to help them recognize and resolve ethical issues. This essay will focus on virtue ethics, deontological ethics, and how these can help students in their professional careers. The origin of virtue ethics dates back to around 325 BC, when Aristotle wrote his book The Nicomachean Ethics (Rachel and Rachel, 2010). He asked the question “What is the good of man?” » to which he responds “an activity of the soul consistent with virtue”. Virtues are character traits that enable individuals to act in ways that bring out the best in themselves (Velasquez et al., 1996). Examples of virtues are prudence, honesty, courage, compassion, self-control and generosity. Aristotle (Rachel and Rachel, 2010) says that the virtues are a midpoint between two extremes, they are “the average with reference to two vices: one of excess and the other of deficiency”. Velasquez et al (1996) suggest that “virtues are like habits; that is, once acquired, they become characteristic of a person. Singer (1994) asserts that there are two kinds of virtue: moral and intellectual. Moral virtue is the result of habit and intellectual virtues grow with a person through learning. This suggests that there are virtues that you grow up with and act that way because you always have middle of paper...... people learn ethics because it will provide them with the knowledge of ethical behavior in the workplace. This will also help them follow the code of ethics for accountants and help the student develop their reasoning skills. In a study of 262 undergraduate business students, Basuray et al. (2010) asked students to rate their ethical judgment before and after a semester of ethics training. They taught students various theories to see if they would use them in an ethical situation. Their findings showed that no specific ethical theory was capable of giving students solutions, but that by using fragments of each of them, it can help find an answer. Although this study showed that teaching ethics does not completely change students' ethical mindset, it still shows that students take the information into account and use bits and pieces of all theories to help them to make ethical decisions..