Sociology Report: Ethical Dilemmas and Kant's Categorical Imperatives

This report, addressing ethical dilemmas in the United States, provides an analysis of a current event article focusing on accounting practices. The report annotates the article, identifies key terms, and summarizes the ethical dilemma. It also highlights the controversies raised and applies Kant's categorical imperatives to the situation. The report further explores issues such as breaches of confidentiality, conflicts of interest, and the challenges of whistleblowing within a business context. Recommendations are provided to mitigate ethical violations, emphasizing the importance of understanding relationships, maintaining confidentiality, and respecting individual autonomy. The conclusion underscores the significance of addressing and avoiding ethical dilemmas in all fields, particularly in business organizations.

Running Head: SOCIOLOGY 0
ETHICAL DILEMMAS
UNITED STATES
[DATE]
[Company name]
[Company address]

SOCIOLOGY 1
Introduction
Through this report, the current event article addressing an ethical dilemma will be presented by
annotating it and all its key terms will be discovered and the entire dilemma will be summarized.
It will also reflect all the raised controversies within. Then the Kant’s categorical imperatives
will be high lightened.
Annotated Article
BIBLIOGRAPHY Sharma, M. K. (2017). A Conceptual Analysis on “Ethical Dilemma” in.
Journal of Commerce and Educational Thoughts, 1, 9-13.
This article deals with the critical application of accounting concepts and standards in a business
organization that is concerned with ethical issues such as trustworthiness, correctness,
transparency, etc. An ethical dilemma is that complex situation in the place of working where the
result of moral imperatives are to be faced by the managers and the employees. Breakdown of
the ethical policy, misstatements in the reports presented yearly and the violation of the proper
code of conduct is very common while conducting an accounting profession. The dilemmas that
occurred in the profession are extemporaneous which can draw a conclusion, guide and supports
organization and then combine it with required thoughtful analysis.
The term ethical dilemma is made up of two terms i.e. ethics and dilemma, where ethics means
the difference between right and wrong for behavior or conduct and dilemma means a situation
where one has to choose one option among the different ones. Thus an ethical dilemma is that

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very hard situation which arouses an intellectual clash between moral essentials where one is to
follow the outcome of other fundamental
In this article, a hypothetical example of a company was given which was facing ethical issues. It
called up its accounting team as those mechanisms which glorify their business and is comprised
up of the highly skilled persons, who managed all the financial machinery of the company and
aided it to run the business in a very adorable manner and the accountants played the role of the
watchdog of the company. But in doing their work there were some members of the authority
having enormous power were trying to cheat the company by putting pressures on their juniors to
manipulate the figures in the accounting process, so to warm up their own pockets which became
the flip side of the misrepresentations of the numbers while making the annual reports. This
created a big mess in the company and the owners or the directors were bound and could not
even remove off those members as those members had attained all the access to the information
and this could also create the issues relating to confidentiality. These members may mutualize
the information they had regarding the company. This was a difficult and confusing situation
held up in the company. These issues further created conflicts of interest between all members of
the company.
These issues are very hard to be recognized but create difficulty for the company. This situation
requires whistleblowing but then it is also very difficult for the accountants to recognize that on
which situation or condition they can blow a whistle in a company or who are the members,
which are getting unethical or committing mistakes with their role (Sharma, 2917).
Kant’s Categorical Imperatives
Immanuel Kant stated that morality's supreme principle is standardized rationality and called it
as the categorical imperative. He further focused on the point that the objective, necessity, and

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condition of CI is that one must always follow the ethical principles irrespective of any personal
desire or wish or the contrary situation. Immoral actions are always irrelevant because they in
some way or other violates the CI. In the above article also some of the accountants were
breaching the duty of respect for the moral laws of the CI. This was completely wrong according
to the theories of Kant.
Recommendations and Suggestions
There are several recommendations or suggestion which can be given to those members or the
accountants who are violating the ethical dilemmas. Some of them are as follows,
Understanding the relationships i.e. what action of one can hurt the image and respect of the
other must be tried to be avoided.
There must be some kind of confidentiality among all the companies or the business organization
whose access must not be given to all, in respect of protecting the image of the company.
The autonomy of the people must be respected i.e. limit on the factors to be disclosed, proper
maintaining of the records, etc.
Conclusion
Hence it is concluded that ethical dilemmas create trouble in all the fields be it to be the business
organizations or any other field. So it must be tried and avoided.
References

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Sharma, M. K. (2917). A Conceptual Analysis on “Ethical Dilemma” in. Journal of Commerce
and Educational Thoughts, 1, 9-13.