Beyond Logos: Teaching Persuasion to Accounting Professionals Through the ELEVATE Framework

Accounting education emphasizes technical proficiency but addresses persuasion only nominally, leaving professionals able to reach a correct conclusion yet underprepared to secure stakeholder acceptance. This integrative literature review synthesizes Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals, Cicero’s five canons, and seven contemporary research traditions into a teaching framework, ELEVATE, built on seven communication practices. Each practice is mapped to a rhetorical appeal, linked to an established research tradition, and illustrated with worked accounting examples. Organized as a sequence from trust to action, ELEVATE offers business communication educators a theoretically grounded approach to teaching persuasion to accounting practitioners and students. The framework awaits empirical validation.