Question

For the last six months, Jill has been with A&A Accounting, a multi-billion dollar entity. A&A has a high-level person responsible for their ethics compliance program who requires all personnel to view 20 hours of compliance videos. While on a flight to another city, Jill happened to sit behind A&A’s ethics officer and overheard the following: “Yes, Bill, we do have a pretty good compliance program, but it’s really just window dressing. Because of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines we have the appearance of doing most of what we should. Just the other day I had a phone call on our ethics hotline that I had to trace even though we guarantee callers will not be identified. I’ll have to deal with it quietly. You know, bad publicity is NOT what A&A tolerates.” Jill should:

a.do nothing.

b.speak to someone higher up concerning the overheard conversation.

c.reveal to the ethics officer what she has heard.

d.tell others in the company about the overheard conversation.

e.report the ethics officer’s conduct to an outside agency for investigation.  

Answer 1

Situation:

• For the last six months, Jill has been with A&A Accounting, a multi-billion dollar entity.
• A&A has a high-level person responsible for their ethics compliance program who requires all personnel to view 20 hours of compliance videos.
• While on a flight to another city, Jill happened to sit behind A&A’s ethics officer and overheard the following: “Yes, Bill, we do have a pretty good compliance program, but it’s really just window dressing. Because of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines we have the appearance of doing most of what we should. Just the other day I had a phone call on our ethics hotline that I had to trace even though we guarantee callers will not be identified. I’ll have to deal with it quietly. You know, bad publicity is NOT what A&A tolerates.”

Explanation:Firstly Lets discuss some options

• She has joined only six months , and after hearing the A&A’s ethics officer it is clear that this ethical misconduct is going for longer than six months
• Doing Nothing is first option but that is a professional misconduct on her part knowing a fraud and not reporting
• she could approach the superiors but there could be risk of being reprimanded by superiors or being guilty of hearing some one else's conversation and being on the firing line or receiving end
• ethics hot line is also not an option as it is a part of company generally directly under the supervision of superiors

Conclusion:Jill Must Tell someone.She is new to the company and it seems as if ethics hot line at her job is not the place to go.Her superiors may already know of the situation and are likely to fire her if she complains to them , so Jill should report the ethics officer’s conduct to an outside agency for investigation preferably to s state department of Labor