I AM AN ACCOUNTANT.COM: ETHICAL DILEMMA - DO I COME CLEAN

ETHICAL DILEMMA - DO I COME CLEAN

I'm a management accountant and every year-end we have to send in this big formal report on our companies performance to the global guys. Real pain in the ass to complete but one of those things you have to do.

Anyway, few months ago we had our year end and it was horrendous as always but got the damn thing in on time. But then, a few weeks after I was looking through it and randomly looked at the stock numbers (which is a huge thing for our business and basically everyone all the way up the chain looks at) and realised that it was all, completely wrong.... SHIIITTT!! This thing was very very high profile and I was having flashes of my boss with my head on a skewer!

All that ethical training is kicking in and a little voice in my head is screaming at me to come clean, I'm an accountant. I should tell me boss what happened, how it was an honest mistake and hope that he's understanding.... but then... another voice kicks in. If I'm still in this role a year from now (and no reason I won't be) I could cover this up, and no one would ever know! But does that mean I break some unspoken accounting code?

It's nearly a year from that faithful day, I listened to the bad voice, told no one and so far, so good!

2 comments:

Mike said...: The accounting code is:

1. Don't get caught
2. Don't get caught
3. Don't get caught

We always do shit like that to hit our profit number, and senior guys know all about it; 4:21 AM
Jess said...: Yeah they never mention that in the ethics classes!; 4:22 AM

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