This brief case involves an ethical issue that many future accounting graduates
ID: 361196 • Letter: T
Question
This brief case involves an ethical issue that many future accounting graduates have faced in recent years. Internship programs are an important facet of the recruiting efforts of large accounting firms. Those accounting firms typically offer internships to students that they hope to hire on a permanent basis when they graduate. Accounting majors enrolled in five-year accounting programs may have an opportunity to take two internships before they graduate. In this case, Arvel Smart served an internship with a Big Four accounting firm during the summer between his third and fourth years in a five-year accounting program. By the end of his fourth year of college, Arvel had decided to accept the job offer that firm had given him at the conclusion of his internship. But, Arvel delayed accepting the job offer so that he could take a second internship with another firm during the summer between his fourth and fifth years in college. The key issue in this case is whether Arvel acted unethically by accepting the second internship when he ultimately intended to accept the offer for a permanent position that he had received as a result of his first internship.
Explanation / Answer
Ethical behaviour means being morally correct. It means behaving in a way that the other party is not negatively affected.Generally a person behaves in a certain way to gain something. An easy way to decide whether a person or a party's actions are ethical or unethical, is to exchange both the person/party's positions in a particular situation. For example: Person A stole 1000$ from person B. Person A is happy here. Now if person B steals 1000$ from person A, would person A still be happy ? the answer is no. The action of stealing affects the other party negatively, Therefore stealing is unethical.
Coming to Arvel's case, he delayed accepting a job so that he could take internship with another firm. He was not transperant with both the firms about his intentions.Hypothetically speaking, if one of the firms treated him in the same way, hiding their intentions and taking actions that benefits only the firm and affects Arvel negatively, would this make Arvel happy or satisfied ? no, he would feel betrayed. Therefore we can say that Arvel acted unethically by accepting the second internship when he ultimately intended to accept the offer for a permanent position that he had received as a result of his first internship.
His actions were unethical towards the first and second, both the firms.
The answer here would have been different if he had been transperent with the firm about his intentions or instead of delaying, he would have rejected the job offered for a permanent posittion as a result of his first internship. But that is a different case.
All in all, Arvel acted unethically in the case mentioned in the queation. .