Description of the Situation

As an employee of a logistics company working in the administration departments, I have come across various cases of moral dilemmas though there is one which really caught my attention. This took place when I was tasked with the responsibility of reconciling the petty cashbook during the usual monthly audits now that the person who was responsible for this task was on his annual leave and naturally one person had to stand in for him and this is how the administration manager settled on me to perform this given task.

However, during the process of reconciliation, I was shocked to come across various cooked figures and receipts of the payments that were actually not made and the money had been given out for such courses. To me, this appeared to be a malpractice or rather a fraud that had been going on for a long time at this workstation and the person involved was my close friend. I was stuck between reporting the truth of the reconciliation process or accepting the cooked receipts and figures for the petty cash book to be able to balance. In as much as I would have wanted to save my friend, I decided to come clean on the matter and reported the malpractice or rather the anomalies to the administration manager who was supposed to take an accurate audit report to the operations manager for further action to be taken.

The first stakeholder who was affected my decision was the employee friend who was in charge of the company’s petty cash that was being operated from the administration department. This is because his actions to defraud the company were contrary to the policy of the organization that demanded absolute integrity and honesty in the handling of the official functions by all the employees.

He was thus going to face a disciplinary action as a result of this professional misconduct something that was, by all means, going to lead to his summary dismissal as this was a classic case of abuse of office. The second group of stakeholders who were going to be affected was the truck drivers whose names had been used to forge receipts of the delivery trips that they did not make by all means. This was also a classic case of corruption and embezzlement from the company since the drivers were colluding with the petty cash clerk to earn what they did not work for hence ending up dividing the money.

The administration manager was also going to be negatively affected by my decision of letting the cat out of the basket given the fact that all these fraudulent activities were happening under her docket something that may be regarded as negligence on the part of her official duties. In a nutshell, the three stakeholders that were going to be affected upon by my decision to report the fraudulent activities were the administration manager, the truck drivers and finally the petty cash clerk who was on his annual leave and directly responsible for all the fraudulent actions uncovered.

Stakeholders and Impacts of the Decision

What could have been considered as the right outcome would have been for me not to reveal and report the anomalies? This was probably been based on the fact that I was under a moral obligation to cover up for my friend since reporting such a matter was by all standards going to make a number of people to lose their jobs on the grounds of the corruption and embezzlement of the company funds through the petty cash that they were involved into. I was thus expected to do the right thing by not revealing such matters in the final audit report that was to be presented to the management for further action to be taken.

On the contrary, what could have been considered wrong would have been for me to reveal the corruption that was taking place in the audit report. This could be so since I could have been perceived to have abated the crime something that could have made me lose my job in the process as well. Integrity and honesty are important professional values that should not be sacrificed on the basis of friendship or any other thing.

The ethical principles that informed the person who made the decision include integrity and honesty. These are important professional values that cannot be dispensed with in the course of one discharging their contractual obligations to their employers. All the workers are under moral obligations to make decisions that uphold integrity and honesty since this is the best way of cultivating proper working relations with the employers. These values of honesty and integrity in the conduct of my professional obligations continue to be very much relevant to me by all standards since they underlie all my professional practices. A true professional is supposed, to be honest, and act with integrity at all times and without any compromise whatsoever.

The biases that might have prevented the person from making the best decision or taking proper action include the personal friendship that he was having with the petty cash clerk who was going to lose her job as a result of this decision to unearth the scandal through the audit. Friendship is a serious bias that leads people within the working environment to cover up the crimes or malpractices of their fellows within the workplace and even in such circumstances, it could have prevented the truth and the right decision from being taken in this case.

In the event that there is an organization in a situation like this, then the best thing that it could have done to prevent situation was to make sure that the petty cash system is automated. This could have ensured that the money is taken in and out of the safe under controlled and accountable situations without the reliance on handwritten receipts that are prone to manipulation. By adopting this approach then the company could not have run in a situation in which an employee could have used such loopholes to embezzle funds with a lot of ease.

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