Question

2. After doing an account analysis and giving the results to your boss, you discover an error in the data for 3 of the 24 months covered by your analysis. In 6 of the 24 months covered by your analysis, your assistant had dropped 000 from the costs. Therefore, you thought analysis had already been passed to a top executive who was going to use it in a presentation to the board of directors tomorrow. Your boss does not want to tell the top executive about the error. Should you? Discuss the ethical issues related to this situation.

Answer 1

Ans) Ethical situations at work can be cause for alarm, and are also a normal part of doing business.The key is to not let either of those realities prevent you from making a rational decision. When it comes to ethics, it's a test of morality of a particular person.

In this case, 'Yes',I should inform the top executive about the error that I have made as soon as possible before he gets ready for his presentation to the board of directors. This should be my priority keeping in mind the ethics and morality of a workplace. Beside taking this step I should also try and make sure that I do inform about the unethical act that my boss was trying to do,no matter what the consequences that I need to face.

The ethical issues that are related are;

a) Dishonesty; One should be honest about his work and if the person has committed any error than he must inform that with integrity.

b) Bad Leadership Behavior ; Sometimes, it's not the employee who exhibits unethical behavior, but their supervisor's. Putting rules in place for employees but not following them yourself is an example of an ethical issue in the workplace.