When the courtroom becomes a classroom: experiential learning in accounting education

Accounting ethics education increasingly emphasises authentic experiential learning that enables students to engage with ethical issues in realistic professional contexts. While simulations and internships are widely used, short-term, high-intensity experiences that expose students to legal accountability remain underexplored. This study examines accounting students’ affective, cognitive, and behavioural reflections after attending a court hearing involving an accounting-related fraud case. Drawing on Kolb’s experiential learning cycle and Wilson and Beard’s stimulus-based reflection model, we analyse affective, cognitive, and behavioural reflections captured through an immediate open-ended survey of 95 students at a Chinese university. The findings show a coherent experiential learning process: students reported strong affective responses, followed by cognitive re-framing of professional responsibility, internal controls, and ethics education, and culminating in behavioural intentions to resist unethical pressure and seek support. The study provides evidence that court hearings can be a feasible experiential learning intervention that integrates technical accounting knowledge with ethical judgement and broadens pedagogical approaches in accounting ethics education.