Question

You work for a large consulting firm and were assigned to the Gold Star LAN project. Work on the project is nearly completed and your clients at Gold Star appear to be pleased with your performance. During the course of the project, changes in the original scope had to be made to accommodate specific needs of managers at Gold Star. The costs of these changes were documented as well as overhead and submitted to the centralized accounting department. They processed the information and submitted a change order bill for your signature. You are surprised to see the bill is 10 percent higher than what you submitted. You contact Jim Messina in the accounting office and ask if a mistake has been made. He curtly replies that no mistake was made and that management adjusted the bill. He recommends that you sign the document. You talk to another project manager about this and she tells you off the record that overcharging clients on change orders is common practice in your firm. Would you sign the document? Why? Why not?

Answer 1

Being a thorough Professional in nature and a believer of Business ethics, it shall be against my principles to sign the document simply because Gold Star clients have been able to successfully please me. Signing such documents today, may help me gain favorable returns in short term however, it may not take me long in my Professional career. The moment my malpractices are exposed in the world, my survival would be at stake and so shall be my identity crisis. Not signing the same, may probably expose me to the threat of losing my job in the short run however, since I may not compromise upon my integrity, I shall not be left with any regrets and perhaps be able to start afresh, working for a Company or a client who are genuine in nature and not fraudsters in making. In fact, in that way, at least I may not have my own identity crisis due to clashes of opinions on such serious matters. Hence, I shall certainly raise the issue with my seniors and not sign the document.