Ethics

1. Introduction
This paper seeks to answer given questions related to an ethical situation faced by Riverside Bottling Company.  Questions relate about the parties that may be affected as a result of a decision to be made in relation with the instruction of a financial vice president to this researcher as assistant controller. Ethical considerations will be identified and other possible alternatives on the case will be drawn.

2. Questions and Answers.
2.1 Who will suffer the negative effects if you do comply with Gena Schmitt instruction Who will suffer if you comply
Riverside, as the business entity, will suffer since it will not be able to comply with its loan requirement from an insurance company to maintain a cash account balance of 200,000 or more as reported monthly.  However,  the instruction of Gena, as the financial vice president, that if the balance as required, the company will default on the companys loan agreement may appear and overstatement since it would just be a violation of a condition in the agreement.  As to whether the insurance company would close the company down and put all the employees out of their jobs may just be an overreaction or overstated assessment of the situation since, Riversides business operations depends on many other things not just from the loan. The violation of the loan agreement may just involve some penalty not as portrayed by Gena. Thus, Gena may be unethically and unnecessarily frightening the employees.
       
If I comply, the company will also suffer due to unethical practice of accounting if found out later by audit whether internally or by the insurance company because the complied requirement to maintain cash account would come out as window dressing (Whittington and Pany, 1995).  If this becomes clear, the company would have to be ready to suffer the penalty if it cannot explain the situation that would convince the insurance company and this may result to strained relationship with the insurance company and other users of financial information including management, investors and other creditors. Another possibility is for employees under finance department, particularly Gena and this researcher, to lose jobs for unethical behavior.

2.1 What are the ethical considerations in this case
The ethical consideration in this case include the following  Complying with the instruction of Gena to open the books for one additional day to allow for the required cash account balance to be maintained will cause the company to violate good business practice since doing so is considered window dressing (Whittington and Pany, 1995). The second one is obeying Genas instruction with obviously overstated feared consequences that may constitute ethical violation by an abuse of an office instruction. Disobeying such order may be difficult on the part of this researcher as it may sound as an act of insubordination but this researcher should stand by doing what is ethically correct for the organization (Mallor, 2003).  

2.3 What alternatives do you have
This researcher does still have some alternative of doing what is ethically correctly and yet may save the company from violating its requirement of maintaining 200,000 or more monthly cash balance and at same time practicing what is good business without completely disobeying the instruction of Gena.  Thus, this researcher could choose to include, but with the need to disclose the check of 150,000 that was mailed yesterday, or a day before June 30 cut-off but which is to be received tomorrow or a day after June 30. By so doing this, good faith is being practiced and the insurance company may just consider a liberal cut-off definition for checks still on mail and would not impose any penalty therewith.   This could be explained to Gena and if she refuses, the instruction to just open the books for one day without disclosure may be disobeyed as the same is unethical (Mallor, 2003).

3.  Conclusion
Ethical situations may be resolved by looking at the consequences of decision made. Instructions from higher officers are meant not to be obeyed if there is evidence that an ethical issue must be resolved since the latters violation may have worse repercussions for the company as found in this case.