Professional Workplace Dilemma

A couple years ago, I was given the opportunity to work on a project that involved unclaimed property from many of our customers. Years prior, one of our accounting executives had decided to write off 3 million worth of credits to an old customer credits account. These old credits would not appear on the customer’s statements and would not be provided unless they requested the credit specifically by number or associated invoice. I was given the tough task of confirming balances with each of the affected customers. That is confirming the balance that is on their statement, which does not include the credits that were written off to the “special account.” If they would confirm by signature, we would be entitled to keep the credits that they were unaware of.

This was a difficult situation for me since I was working with top accounting executives of the company. I was working closely with our VP of finance, our finance manager, and our senior accountant. To say the least, I felt that working with them would give me a step up in my career, especially since I am majoring in the field of accounting. When I was handed this project I was working in the receivables department, so these finance executives had control over my position. Before this project, I never spoke to them.

There was a major difference in power and authority because these are top executives and I’m an accounting clerk, so definitely they would have authority over what tasks I would complete. Their power and authority would determine how far I could go with the company and even if I keep my job. The ethics in question were the concealment of the old customer credits and the lack of informing the customer of monies that they truly own. The ethics were that if the customers were not aware of their credits, they could potentially sign off and never be able to reclaim their monies.

The potential outcomes were that if I completed the task as I am told, the company would retain $3 million...