Tags: Decision-making, Investors
This dilemma addresses the issues of fraud and false accounting.
Life is stressful for Paul at the moment. He’s having problems with his ex-wife. His maintenance payments aren’t enough apparently. On top of that, at work he’s already a team member short because one staff member left, and now Karen has called in sick with stress.
Their sales figures are woefully poor for this quarter already, and with two team members down, they’ll never make them up at this rate. Paul can feel the stress getting to him, so he goes outside to grab a coffee. At the coffee shop he meets Darren, his opposite number. Darren used to work for Paul, but got promoted to manage his own team.
“Why the long face?” he jokes when he sees Paul, who explains his problems.
“Is that all?” laughs Darren. “You’re doing it all wrong, mate!” He then proceeds to tell Paul of various tricks that he and his team use to bump up their figures when they’re low.
Paul is shocked. “You can’t do that!”
“Why not?” says Darren. “Everybody does it. You just cancel the orders once your figures are in and no harm done.”
“But it’s not right!” says Paul.
“Seems to me that you’re not in a position to take the moral high ground at the moment,” says Darren.
What would you advise Paul to do?