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I was studying my accounting textbook today and laughed at a nice example in the ethics section: "A serial killer who believes all prostitutes are evil is acting in accordance with his own convictions, but he is not a person of integrity"
and.. "excellence: we endeavour to do our job as well as we possibly can. We expect a surgeon about to remove our appendix to be competent to do this"
by now, I'm rolling on the floor laughing, but it gets better: "It is probably no conincidence that Josephson has identified ten characteristics of an ethical person in the same way as Moses descended from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments."
^ I think that explains it all. Yes, dear god. Thankfully this book has 4 authors.

For those of you who don't think that's funny, the next joke is a little longer, but is well worth the read.
The background information around it has been included in case you are interested:

Business or professional ethics is a marrying of the rules of society with the moral principles by which a society is judged. The question of business ethics is well illustrated in the story by W. Albrecht (1992):

There was once a very wealthy man who loved his money so much that he did not have many friends. in fact, he had only three friends. First, he had a lawyer friend who helped him structure his transactions to take advantage of other people. Second, he had an accountant friend who helped him count his money. And third, he had a minister of religion to whom he went every Sunday to confess the fact that he had taken advantage of others during the week. When he got old and was about to die, he called his three friends together and said, 'I have been wealthy all my life and I cannot stand going to the grave poor. I am going to give you each an envelope with $50000 in it. I want you to promise me that when I die you will go to my casket and each deposit the envelope in the casket'. They all promised that they would. A short time later the rich man died. As the three friends passed by the casket, each deposited an envelope. The casket was sealed and the body was buried. Not long after, the minister developed a guilty conscience; he called the other two and said. 'We have to meet and talk about this'. When they met he said, 'You know, I thought about the poor members of my congregation. I thought about that money rotting down there in the grave and I just could not do it. I only put $25000 in and I kept $25000 to help the poor'. Then the lawyer said, 'If you really want to know the truth, he had asked me for free legal advice so often that I felt he owed it to me, so I kept $25 000 and only put $25 000 in'. Finally, the accountant said, 'You know I cannot believe you would do that. I cannot believe you would both be unethical. I want you to know that in my envelope was a cheque for the full $50000'.

As this is a text about accounting, let us look at three of several choices available to the accountant: He could have put an empty envelope in the grave, as the deceased only asked him to deposit the envelope. This would have been following the letter of the request but not the spirit.

He could have done what he did in the story. Here he followed the letter of the request and some would say a small measure of the spirit of the request. Of course, we know the cheque will never be cashed and that the accountant is $50 000 better off. Is the accountguilty of stealing the money?

He could have carried out the deceased's wishes to the full, following the letter and the spirit of the request: that is, deposited the full $50000 in cash in the casket.

As a professional person, the accountant was obliged to carry out in full the wishes of client and friend regardless of his personal feelings or beliefs. Business or professional mean just that: clever or smart alternatives are not acceptable.

Remember, one of the characteristics of an ethical person referred to by Josephson (1992) was promise keeping. All three individuals should not have promised to put the envelope if in fact they knew they could not do it. The lawyer should have asked for his unpaid time to be paid by the wealthy friend. The minister should have asked the friend to consider donating to the church. The accountant did not comply with the spirit of his original request and all three acted unethically.

Posted at: 0:51 | Mood: Sleepy | Music: Doom 3 Theme
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