Student imaginings, cognitive dissonance and critical thinking

International audienceIn this paper we urge accounting educators to encourage imaginings and critical thinking in students. We reflect on the results of an assignment in which French accounting students were encouraged to assess the collapse of Enron. The submitted assignments attest to the originality and richness of non-conformist stories reported by students. However, they also revealed strong instances of cognitive dissonance that we contend was fostered by the contradictions students detected between the rhetoric and the reality of capitalism; and by the perpetuation of socially bereft capitalist values in accounting curricula. The assignment manifested student discontent with the current pervading economic system and its moral and ethical precepts. We identify the ways by which students responded to their cognitive dissonance. We propose some pedagogic and curriculum initiatives to improve accounting education. These intitiatives call for stronger efforts to connect accounting topics with the social world to demystify the alleged naturalness of the capitalist system; for students to be encouraged to imagine other cultures and discourses; and for them to challenge any prevailing ideology