Ethical Dilemma- What Could Have Happened? (Essay Sample)

ETHICAL DILEMMA: What could have happened? A Chief Finance Officer has the responsibility of overseeing financial statements and/or reports necessary to evaluate the performance of a firm for the whole accounting period. With the power given to CFOs, they are expected to act in good faith (Love and Eickemeyer 2020). This means that they should not commit any forms of misconduct and fraud which may lead to greater problems. As evidence, the ever-famous Enron Scandal, which manipulated their income to hide the company’s problems and attract investors (Bondarenko 2018). Similarly, Chris Marsh which is the Chief Finance Officer of Patisserie Valerie, has actually faced the same problem with Enron. He manipulated the financial status of the company to use it to his own gain.. Patisserie Valerie is a chain of cafes that mainly operates in United Kingdom. This company was founded in 1926 and was able to grow and be successful in their field. However, in 2018, they faced their biggest financial problem; they were involved in a scandal about manipulating financial data. Moreover, the one responsible for fraud was actually the Chief Finance Officer. From then, the company investigated and they discovered that they were actually on the verge of bankruptcy as they were informed that they failed to pay their taxes. The question is, why did no one speak about this? Despite knowing about it, as this kind of scam typically does not involve only one person (Wojtus 2021). The employees actually face an ethical dilemma wherein they need to choose the best option that would benefit the majority of the people. However, these choices are from conflicting moral beliefs and both would result in bad endings. They could either save themselves by turning a blind eye or become whistleblowers and put the company at risk. Technically, the employee incorporated Utilitarian Ethics. In the sense that they are actually thinking of what is good for the majority of the employees (Ethical Theories 2022). Howbeit, they are actually keeping their mouth shut so that they and their colleagues would not lose their job. They could report the authentic data in public but it would cause a great scandal, and their stakeholders would lose trust in the company. It will make the company fall and file for bankruptcy. At the end of the day, no matter how they justified their reasons, what they did was actually as bad as the defrauder as they kept the truth inside to save themselves. They were selfish enough to not care about others who might have been affected by the scandal. Generally, what these employees did was either good or bad. Good in the sense th...