BA 3102: Analyzing a Moral Dilemma & Ethical Decision-Making

This essay presents a detailed analysis of a moral dilemma encountered in a logistics company's administration department, where the author discovered fraudulent activities related to the petty cashbook. Faced with the choice of reporting the misconduct or protecting a friend, the author chose to uphold integrity and honesty by reporting the anomalies to the administration manager. The essay identifies the stakeholders affected by this decision, including the petty cash clerk, truck drivers, and the administration manager, and discusses the potential consequences for each. It explores the ethical principles that guided the decision-making process, emphasizing the importance of integrity and honesty in professional conduct. The essay also considers the biases that might have influenced the decision, such as personal friendship, and suggests preventative measures, such as automating the petty cash system, to avoid similar situations in the future. The analysis draws upon various academic sources to support its arguments and provide a comprehensive understanding of ethical dilemmas in the workplace.

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Student’s name
Instructor’s name
Course
Date
Ethical dilemmas at the workplace
As an employee of a logistics company working in the administration departments, I have
come across various cases of moral dilemmas though there is one which really caught my
attention. This took place when I was tasked with the responsibility of reconciling the petty
cashbook during the usual monthly audits now that the person who was responsible for this task
was on his annual leave and naturally one person had to stand in for him and this is how the
administration manager settled on me to perform this given task. However, during the process of
reconciliation, I was shocked to come across various cooked figures and receipts of the payments
that were actually not made and the money had been given out for such courses. To me, this
appeared to be a malpractice or rather a fraud that had been going on for a long time at this
workstation and the person involved was my close friend. I was stuck between reporting the truth
of the reconciliation process or accepting the cooked receipts and figures for the petty cash book
to be able to balance. In as much as I would have wanted to save my friend, I decided to come
clean on the matter and reported the malpractice or rather the anomalies to the administration
manager who was supposed to take an accurate audit report to the operations manager for further
action to be taken.
The first stakeholder who was affected my decision was the employee friend who was in
charge of the company's petty cash that was being operated from the administration department.
This is because his actions to defraud the company were contrary to the policy of the

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organization that demanded absolute integrity and honesty in the handling of the official
functions by all the employees. He was thus going to face a disciplinary action as a result of this
professional misconduct something that was, by all means, going to lead to his summary
dismissal as this was a classic case of abuse of office. The second group of stakeholders who
were going to be affected was the truck drivers whose names had been used to forge receipts of
the delivery trips that they did not make by all means. This was also a classic case of corruption
and embezzlement from the company since the drivers were colluding with the petty cash clerk
to earn what they did not work for hence ending up dividing the money. The administration
manager was also going to be negatively affected by my decision of letting the cat out of the
basket given the fact that all these fraudulent activities were happening under her docket
something that may be regarded as negligence on the part of her official duties. In a nutshell, the
three stakeholders that were going to be affected upon by my decision to report the fraudulent
activities were the administration manager, the truck drivers and finally the petty cash clerk who
was on his annual leave and directly responsible for all the fraudulent actions uncovered.
What could have been considered as the right outcome would have been for me not to
reveal and report the anomalies? This was probably been based on the fact that I was under a
moral obligation to cover up for my friend since reporting such a matter was by all standards
going to make a number of people to lose their jobs on the grounds of the corruption and
embezzlement of the company funds through the petty cash that they were involved into. I was
thus expected to do the right thing by not revealing such matters in the final audit report that was
to be presented to the management for further action to be taken. On the contrary, what could
have been considered wrong would have been for me to reveal the corruption that was taking
place in the audit report. This could be so since I could have been perceived to have abated the

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crime something that could have made me lose my job in the process as well. Integrity and
honesty are important professional values that should not be sacrificed on the basis of friendship
or any other thing.
The ethical principles that informed the person who made the decision include integrity
and honesty. These are important professional values that cannot be dispensed with in the course
of one discharging their contractual obligations to their employers. All the workers are under
moral obligations to make decisions that uphold integrity and honesty since this is the best way
of cultivating proper working relations with the employers. These values of honesty and integrity
in the conduct of my professional obligations continue to be very much relevant to me by all
standards since they underlie all my professional practices. A true professional is supposed, to be
honest, and act with integrity at all times and without any compromise whatsoever.
The biases that might have prevented the person from making the best decision or taking
proper action include the personal friendship that he was having with the petty cash clerk who
was going to lose her job as a result of this decision to unearth the scandal through the audit.
Friendship is a serious bias that leads people within the working environment to cover up the
crimes or malpractices of their fellows within the workplace and even in such circumstances, it
could have prevented the truth and the right decision from being taken in this case.
In the event that there is an organization in a situation like this, then the best thing that it
could have done to prevent situation was to make sure that the petty cash system is automated.
This could have ensured that the money is taken in and out of the safe under controlled and
accountable situations without the reliance on handwritten receipts that are prone to
manipulation. By adopting this approach then the company could not have run in a situation in
which an employee could have used such loopholes to embezzle funds with a lot of ease.

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Works cited
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Valentine, Sean R., Sheila K. Hanson, and Gary M. Fleischman. "The Spiraling and Spillover of
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