Essay

A multi-billionaire business mogul has just hired you as the new Chief Financial Officer [CFO] of his extremely profitable multi-national conglomerate. The former CFO recently died.

You were earning $150,000 a year [but barely making ends meet] at your former job but now, you are being paid $3,000,000 a year plus another $1,000,000 in lavish perks because instead of being responsible for the finances of an $200,000,000 company, you are CFO of a 15-billion dollar business. This company is not publicly-traded but is privately owned by four investors of which the Chairman/CEO is the founder and majority owner [He owns 80% of the company and his wife owns 5%].

You were hired because you impressed the founder with your honesty, acumen and energy-level – but especially your honesty. He said, “I could have hired any one of a dozen high-powered big-time financiers, but honesty is the one thing I treasure more than skill. Skill is cheap; honesty is priceless.”

As the new CFO, you decided to conduct a thorough review of the company’s finances. You discover that three female employees, all of whom are young and do not have any college degrees, receive more than $25,000 a month each. After you raise this issue with the founder, he instructs you to leave the matter as is and keep quiet about it. You comply.

Later, you also discover that $1,000,000 a month is being diverted through several of the firm’s subsidiaries into the personal account of the founder’s wife. [His wife manages an art gallery owned by the city.] Your inquiries cause the wife to immediately meet with you privately. She tells you that this action has been going on for more than a decade and that I should not interfere nor tell her husband. She states that she is aware of her husband’s “improprieties” and that his money is her money as far as she is concerned. Furthermore, she owns 5% of the company anyway. She also states that if she were “greedy”, she would be taking “twice as much” and it still would not affect the business overall [which so far, is very true]. She adds, “He sleeps with and pays his whores, I sleep with and pay myself.”

She further explains that if you did divulge this information, she would file for divorce and literally take half of what her husband owned and make his life hell [there was no pre-nuptial agreement] and that she would make sure you would never work for another significant company [given that she is highly connected and respected in her own right].

She did applaud you, however, for uncovering what the former CFO had not. Lastly, as an incentive for you to maintain the status quo, she would use her influence to send additional business to your wife’s/husband’s new interior decorating firm.

Given that you work for her husband, the founder, you are faced with the following questions:

1. On which principle[s] of ethics or philosophies [as specifically presented in class] would you not inform your boss about what his wife is doing?

2. On which principle[s] of ethics or philosophies [as specifically presented in class] would you inform your boss about what his wife is doing?

3. On which principle[s] of ethics or philosophies [as specifically presented in class] would you accept her offer to help your wife’s/husband’s business?

4. On which principle[s] of ethics or philosophies [as specifically presented in class] would you not accept her offer to help your wife’s/husband’s business?

5. Personally, what decisions with respect to both issues, would you make?