THE QUESTION:

You work in the accounting department of a large home improvement company, and a sales manager submits an expense report for a client dinner from the previous evening. Later that week you see the sales manager’s wife in the office speaking with the receptionist. You overhear her tell the receptionist what a lovely dinner she and her husband had at the very restaurant he submitted on the expense report.

 

WHAT’S YOUR ANSWER?

A. You make the sales manager’s supervisor aware of it and ask him/her to confirm who attended the business dinner.

B. Your report the sales manager to his superiors.

C. You take note of the expense report, but don’t do anything for now. You monitor the sales manager’s expenses to see if it happens again.

D. You ask the sales manager if the expense report was a mistake while chit-chatting about his dinner with his wife.

 

WHAT’S MY ANSWER?

I picked A: You make the sales manager’s supervisor aware of it and ask him/her to confirm who attended the business dinner.

 

This one was a tough one, but in the end I decided to go to the supervisor. I would be concerned that it would look like an oversite on my end if I did nothing about it and it ended up being an issue. At the same time, wives may have been invited to a client dinner, in which case the sales manager would’ve done nothing wrong. Getting more information from the supervisor would help clear up some of these questions.

 

Well, what do you think? Agree? Disagree? Let me know your answer and why in the comments below.

 

Click hereto read an evaluation of this Dilemma from Fulvio Di Blasi, a world-renown scholar in the field of applied philosophy and business ethics.

 

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