1. A school district decided to add an ethics officer to its administration. The district had watched how often the district was dealing with ethically sensitive situations. After doing research into how many organizations used an ethics officer and the desired education and background for such an officer, the district advertised for a person with the following qualifications: education in accounting, finance, or criminal justice; CPA preferred; and experience with compliance or audits. The district hired a person with a CPA license, degree in accounting and experience as an internal auditor doing compliance audits.
At the press conference to introduce the new ethics officer, a local news reporter pointedly asked about the candidate's background. The ethics officer stated as a CPA he knew how to handle ethical issues and he had the highest integrity. The reporter decided to a little more background research before writing the article. The state board of public accountancy of that state maintained an online database for the public to verify that a CPA was currently licensed. When the reporter could not find the ethics officer as a currently licensed CPA, he called the district and the ethics officer for a comment.
What should the district and ethics officer do? Use the ethical theories to defend your answer.
2. Mr. Arty works for Smile Accounting Firm as a senior accountant. Currently he is doing review of rental property compliance testing completed by the staff accountants. He realizes that the staff accountants only tested two tenants per property instead of the required three by the audit program. To request more information from the client would cause massive delays and the manager is pressing hard for the information before the Christmas vacation. What should Mr. Arty do and why? Use the ethical theories to discuss the situation.
3. Andersen was the auditor for Enron, WorldCom, Waste Management and other companies that committed fraud. The company was forced to shut its doors forever after a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against the firm that it had obstructed justice and lied to the government in the Enron case. One thing Andersen had done was to shred documents related to its audit of Enron before the government could get its hands on them. Some in the profession thought the government had gone too far given the facts and mediating circumstances including top management's deception; others believed the punishment was unjustified because most accounting firms got caught up in similar situations during the late 1990s and early 2000s (pre-Sarbanes-Oxley). What do you believe? Use ethical reasoning to support your answer.