These Teaching Notes accompany the “Fancy Fliers” class activity that uses a simple and fun activity—making paper airplanes—to create a competitive environment in an interactive group learning activity that helps them appreciate the pressures under which accountants operate in a manufacturing or corporate setting and develop an understanding of what constitutes aggressive accounting. The Teaching Notes provide additional comments on implementing the activity as well as insights to facilitate a post-activity debrief and discussion of financial reporting pressure and distinctions between aggressive accounting and fraud. These Teaching Notes also contain a sample of an actual student group’s responses so that instructors can see the output and types of issues they may encounter.
We use the Fancy Fliers activity to review key accounting concepts and to illustrate the pressures accountants often experience and how these pressures may lead to aggressive or fraudulent accounting. The activity is always a highlight of the...
