Question: You are a staff accountant at Outrageous Corporation. The controller of the company, Howard Eino, is concerned that profits reported in the annual report will not meet those forecast at the beginning of the year. He has asked you to decrease the amount of annual depreciation charged on certain equipment by revising the estimated life. When you tell Mr. Eino that you are uncomfortable revising useful life solely to ‘manage' profit, he responds by saying, ‘oh, everybody does it.' You realize if you fail to do what your boss requests you may receive a poor performance evaluation, and may even lose your job. You also know this is not appropriate practice. How will you resolve this dilemma? To help think through the problem, you've decided to write an outline to record the issues, relevant information, your reasoning, and the course of action you finally decide to take. Though this outline will only be for you, you want to make it complete and well organized so that your thinking will be clear. Write the outline. A successful outline will:

1) Detail all relevant facts pertaining to the dilemma Identify possible courses of action, and how various groups will be impacted by each choice

2) Apply guidelines for ethical decisions

3) Avoid logical fallacies

4) Determine a final course of action

5) Provide a preliminary plan for implementing the decision 6) Be error free and concise