You are a graduate of USF’s accounting program and after sev…
You are a graduate of USF’s accounting program and after several years in public accounting you accepted a position at a mid-size corporation in Tampa 8 months ago. Your immediate supervisor is another former USF student. While at USF you socialized briefly while in Beta Alpha Psi but had not seen this person until your interview. You feel that you were given the job because of this prior relationship. While reviewing the year-end financial statements with your supervisor she shared her concern about this year’s net income: company management had hoped for a 10% increase from 2023 to 2024, but the numbers support only a 5% increase. Your supervisor is afraid that the company will miss analyst earnings forecast of $0.17 per share. She suggests a simple way to allow the company to meet analyst forecasts. Even though the company’s policy is to assess the value of inventory at lower of the cost or market for each inventory item individually, your supervisor suggests assessing the value of inventory at the product category level instead, which will result in a significantly smaller write-down of inventory and therefore an increase in net income. She argues that “we can always go back to the old policy next year.” Required: Using the Framework for Understanding Ethical Decision Making in Business (in Ferrell and Fraedrich, Chapter 5 page 21 of the course readings), discuss factors other than ethical issue intensity that you believe would affect your decision whether to support/not support your supervisor on this issue.
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