Sarahh Roberts is the assistant chief accountant at the HK Company, a manufacturer of computer chips and cell phones. The company presently has total sales of $20 million. It is the end of the first quarter, Sarahh is hurriedly trying to prepare a general ledger trial balance so that the quarterly financial statements can be prepared and released to management and the regulatory agencies. The total credits on the trial balance exceed the debits by $1,000. In order to meet the 5 PM deadline, Sarahh decides to force the debits and credits into balance by adding the amount of the difference to the Equipment account. She chose Equipment because it is one of the larger account balances; percentage-wise, it will be the least misstated. Sarahh "plugs" the difference! She believes that the difference will not affect anyone’s decisions. She wishes that she had another few days to find the error but realizes that the financial statements are already late.

REQUIRED:

1. What are the ethical issues?
2. Who are the stakeholders? (at least 3)
3. What are Sarahh’s alternatives? (at least 3)
4. What would you do? Explain

Explanation:

1.The ethical issues are bad faith and false statement. Sarahh's dishonesty may get her into problems for involving in deceptive activity, though it might be a mistake of some one else. The coalition of numbers will result into the mistake remaining and the equipment account misstated.

2. The share holders, the management, the employees etc. are the stakeholders

3. The following are Sarahh’s alternatives:

a) Sarahh could  discuss the issue with the chief accountant, so that he can give a  worthy insight might be given to locate the error

b) She could get the management informed about the divergence and make a request for few more days to identify and correct the error, so that a dependable and accurate financial statement can be issued.

c) Another alternative is for her to get the report issued  only to the management for their consideration while  the error is unaltered, and inform them that only few days will be  required for the error to be identified  and amended .

4. I would rather choose the third alternative (C). Reason being that once the management considers and approves the financial statements it is very sure that the error would be identified and also once they get aware of the divergence, they can take a  financial decision with respect to the account mismatch.