The stockholders in this situation are the members of the corporation the people that are financially invested in the company, which means they own some type of stock in the company. Stockholders usually have no rights to be involved directly in the company’s management.
Several things are unethical about President Kelley’s actions. First thing would be she asked the controller to only prove the positive things while not making any mention of the negative. The responsibility of a controller is to report financial data of a company weather it is good or bad stockholders have a right to know what they are investing their money. It is the responsibility of the controller is to guide the financial decisions of a company, establish and execute internal controls, handle the financial planning and reporting (Dorward 2019). The President’s decision to down play the negative aspects of the company’s financial records is a violation of integrity; being straightforward, honest and truthful in all relationships a person should not be involved with any information that is believed to be materially false or misleading or misleading by omission. In addition, objectivity bias should not be allowed, conflict of interest or the influence of another person that will override your professional judgement (CIMA 2019).
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The Controller should not remain silent that would be a violation of the code of ethics as well another person should not influence the Controller’s ability to do his/her job. Erin does have a professional responsibility to the company and stockholders as well. As a public relations person Erin also have ethics that he/she must adhere too. Public relation ethics include honesty, openness, loyalty, fair-mindedness, respect, integrity, and forthright communication. These are not traits that are being displayed by Erin in this scenario (Bowen 2007). Erin has an obligation to the company just as much as the Controller and the President.
Ethical verses Codes of Conducts, following the Codes of Conduct the Controller, the President and Erin should be professional and keep the company’s best interest up front. Ethically you would think that has a human being it would be one in the same, but taking the ethical approach from the tutorial. In the Ethical approach the determining factors would be based on the consequential, nonconsequential, and virtue ethic theories. Ethics studies are related to moral conduct and responsibilities of a person. The consequentialist theory claims that the morality of an action is based upon its consequences only. Looking at the actions of the President, her actions were not based upon this theory because her actions could have some very adverse effects on her and the company. However, Ethical Egoism says that each person should act in his /her own best interest. That approach can be argued that the President took when making her decision (Weygandt).
The accounting code of conduct that responds to “Is there anything unethical in President Kelley’s actions?” Integrity, the President has a duty of professional competence and due care which was not displayed in the decision that she made to mislead the stockholders and others. The responsibility of the Controller is to have safe guides in place to minimize the chances of situations such as this, if the controller does not speak up and then no the controller is not following the accounting code of conduct. The President is displaying the ethical approach of non-consequentialist that says “The morality of an action depends on other principles or factors that are not related to consequences”. In addition, it invokes consequential theory because “It can be easily used to justify her questionable actions.
In conclusion, the actions of the President and Erin were both questionable code of conduct and ethics are set in place to prevent situations such as this from taking place in companies. Morally people do not always make the best decisions but if some type of guidelines are in place it helps to guide people in the right direction.
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