Thursday, February 17, 2011

Stealing from the church.......

I've had a long week to say the least....So I apologize for this blog coming so late. Monday was Valentines Day and Tuesday I was stuck at the airport from 8 til 8 and I just finished my audit for this week and this is my first opportunity to share some information with you guys.....

Just recently got assigned to a group project in class and my case study is more interesting than I imagined......Here are a few of the details........There is an executive committee at First Street church....This committee is repsonsible for all the finances that come in and out of the church....welll someone has been stealing. Every Sunday. For over a year!!!! How much did they take??????? Lets say north of $23k....Finally the head of the church decides to do something about it and confronts his committee....The thief is on the committee and she is feeling a lot of pressure from the head of the church, so she lies and throws an absent committee member under the bus......All this time she has been purposely having someone else record a lower amount on the books and she would take the excess and go down the street and give the money to a homeless shelter.......Now isnt this a trip!! You're stealing money from the church to give to the poor!!!!!!! That almost sounds like and oxymoron!!!! Anyhow the case ends right there but asks a few questions, that I want to ask you.......

She calls up the man she accused and tells him no to show up to the next meeting because she is going to come clean.....My question is........ would you show up???

Second question.....Lets say she does actually come clean, (just because she is a thief doesnt mean she is a liar too...yeah right) and gets fired from her position and is ordered to pay the money back.....Is this fair?? What do you think??

Since this is ethics I have to say that her intentions were good but obviously the way she went about doing things were all wrong......Most of the time this is always the case when you have to make an ethical decision. Someone will be hurt for a greater good, or implied good. Who is to say that the outcome is good, or just not the lesser of two evils?? Lets say she asked for the money to give to the church but was turned down. The homeless shelter would still need it, she has been taking it for a year so obviously the church didn't need it. So why would she have to pay it back?? Is that greed on the churches behalf?? Is that ethical??

?????????

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Did she make the right decision??

So its been a few days since my last blog, and it has been rough in between. Dallas has basically been covered in a blanket of snow for 6 of the last 9 days. The Super Bowl was in town, and my team lost. So its been rough for me.....The last time I wrote, I touched on employers asking their workers to come in under treacherous driving conditions. I brought this up in class on Monday I received quite a few different responses. Most of the class thought that companies should value their employees lives more than making a buck. For they truly are the glue that holds the company together. Someone made a valid statement when they said that if everybody stayed at home during bad weather the worst could happen.......Lets dig into that a little more.....Lets say the nurse at the local hospital didn't show up for work last week.....at all. Is she wrong for not putting her own life at risk for the sake of others?????? Is this an unethical decision?? Lets say she lives 30 miles from the hospital...and another nurse lives 3 miles away. Does the nurse who lives further have a valid excuse for not showing up?? Should the nurse who stays closer and shows up to work be rewarded?? Is that ethical?? Is that fair to the other nurse who lives further??  Or is she just doing here job?? How do you make this fair for all involved?? Obviously the patients who don't have a nurse suffer, but lets say the nurse does leave her house and slides off an overpass, and loses her life?? Did she make the right decision??  Di her ethics cost her, her life?? Should our drive to do whats right lead us to displacing our own self interest?? Sometimes it will and most of the time this is exactly what happens......

Its safe to day that ethics is not cut and dry and will not always make the right decision, depending on who is affected. We have to think ethically everyday and ask ourselves simple question like...."would I want to be treated this way?? If someone did this to me how would it make me feel?? Could I justify my actions if I had to explain them to someone else" 

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Profit or Safety......

So yesterday, I get to class and we are moving right along into the 2nd chapter when the teacher decides to give us our first case study and research paper. I can tell this is gonna be a long semester but I will make the best of it. Moving along, the case study involved a scenario that is played out all over the world, so it really caught my attention. I myself have been victim to this situation before but never looked at it from a CPA's point of view. Though we have only had two classes we are being drilled to look at every situation we encounter and decide the best outcome based from an ethical viewpoint. So here we go......You have a classic scenario where there are supposed to be two people closing a store at night and one decides to leave early. Then makes it a habit and leaves the other employee who happens to be female to close by herself and tend to customers by herself.  I don't have to tell you all of the things that could go wrong with only one person to close and handle customers at the same time. There are quite a few things that are at risk by not having adequate coverage at a store........We had to identify all of the potential things that could be at jeopardy in this scenario.....I wont bore you with the details, but since we CPA's are supposed to look at every business case ethically lets me give you all a case study and you tell me the ethical issues at play.......I want you guys opinion to see if we are thinking along the same lines.....

Today, February 1, 2011, we had record low temperatures in the Dallas metroplex and a lot of precipitation had accumulated overnight. When I awoke this morning the city was covered in a blanket of snow and ice. Texas is not prepared for situations like this as it does not snow here regularly. We have a designated hotline at my job to call in inclement weather to let us know if operations will be shut down or not.....Fortunately, I did not have to go to work today......but I know someone who did. They got a call from their supervisor this morning when they did not show up for work.......The supervisor stated that they could not afford to lose money by not opening today and that they had an obligation to their customers to fulfill. They also stated that If they had to be there they were gonna make sure everyone else did too......The roads here are undriveable at best and there were reported accidents everywhere in the city, some fatal, some not. There were people who had been stranded for hours and had run out of gas so the car quit and they had to sit in 20 degree weather with no heat........how difficult would it be for the employee to make it to work in these types of conditions??? You tell me what company values its customers business more than the safety of its employees?? Do you see the ethical dilemma???? Do I ask my employee to risk his life to help me generate profit?? Or am I looking at it the wrong way?? There were plenty of people who needed supplies in case this weather stuck and they'd be trapped inside for days.....Did the store owe it to the customers to be open to service them?? What decision should the manager have made???? Profit?? or Employee??