<p>This study examines whether and how attending a court hearing influences the ethical judgment and ethical intention of accounting students. Using a mixed-methods, quasi experimental design, the study combines pre- and post-test measures from the Multidimensional Ethics Scale with qualitative survey evidence drawn from students’ reflections following attendance at a fraud-related court hearing. The quantitative results indicate a significant improvement in ethical judgment among students who attended the hearing, together with a positive but more modest change in ethical intention. The qualitative findings further illuminate the processes underlying these changes, suggesting that the courtroom experience encouraged students to reassess ethical issues through a more contextualized understanding of professional responsibility, while also prompting empathic engagement through perspective-taking and identity transference. Together, the findings contribute to the literature on experiential ethics education by demonstrating how exposure to formal legal proceedings can strengthen accounting students’ ethically relevant evaluative and intentional capacities in a professionally situated context.</p>