You are employed as a section manager for Gadgets & Gizmos, Inc. As part of your duties, you are required to help prepare a budgeted income statement for the section before the new fiscal year begins. You know that after the close of each fiscal year's financial reports, managers are awarded incentive bonuses. The incentive bonuses are directly based upon the excess of actual income achieved by their section over budgeted income for that fiscal period.
Tell us (a) about an ethical conflict that you might have while assisting with the budget preparation, and (b) how the outcome of that ethical conflict could ultimately do harm to employees, customers or the company as a whole.