Both men and women pursue careers in accounting equally, but the percentage of women that remain in the public accounting profession dwindles among the higher-tier and lead positions of larger firms (Association of International Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) 2019). While there are many variables that could affect this trend, one factor might be fewer advancement opportunities for women due to implicit bias within the profession. Since decisions about what positions to pursue, who to hire, and who to promote will be important choices in a student’s future accounting career, we thought it would be essential to teach awareness of gender bias in the profession and to prepare students with techniques to recognize and decode implicit gender biases. For this instructional exercise, our students participated in a simple experiment, attended a lecture with discussion on gender bias and occupational stereotypes, and reviewed and discussed the compiled data from their responses. We found that sharing the data comparisons by gender helped to spark lively discussions and create memorable learning experiences. We explore the topics of gender bias and gender coded words in an activity that was developed to test for bias and to be used to build awareness of potential gender bias in hiring or promotion activities. As the profession seeks to understand more about creating an inclusive environment to retain employees, this timely experiment to explore how implicit bias could occur in hiring and promotion is an intervention itself.

男性和女性都平等地从事会计职业，但留在公共会计专业中的女性百分比在较大公司的较高职位和领导职位中有所减少（国际注册会计师协会（AICPA）2019）。尽管有许多因素可能影响这一趋势，但一个因素可能是由于职业内隐的偏见，女性晋升的机会减少了。由于决定从事何种职位，聘用和晋升的人将是学生未来会计职业的重要选择，因此，我们认为，必须在该专业中教授对性别偏见的认识，并为学生提供识别技术的准备，这一点至关重要并解读内隐的性别偏见。在本教学练习中，我们的学生参加了一个简单的实验， 我们发现按性别共享数据比较有助于引发活跃的讨论并创造令人难忘的学习经历。 我们在一项旨在测试偏见的活动中探索性别偏见和性别编码词的主题，该活动旨在测试偏见并用于在招聘或晋升活动中建立对潜在性别偏见的认识。随着该行业寻求更多地了解如何创造一个包容性的环境来留住员工，这项及时的实验旨在探讨在聘用和晋升中如何产生隐性偏见，这本身就是一种干预措施。