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Analysis Paper: Ethical Dilemma

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Analysis Paper: Ethical Dilemma Last summer I had an opportunity to intern for a regional public accounting firm just outside of Philadelphia. During the internship, I encountered my first real on the job "ethical dilemma." I had been working at the firm for probably 3 weeks before the incident occurred. It happened on a Friday in late June. This was no ordinary Friday, as all of the partners of the firm were out of the office on an annual retreat. Furthermore, on this Friday, many of the managers and principals of the firm were out of the office on vacation. Continuing, it was lunch time and I was approached by a senior staff member (who happened to be kind of the clown of the office). He invited me to a lunch engagement …show more content…

I drove with another employee, so getting up and leaving was not an option. Furthermore, I did not feel comfortable asking someone to take me back to work, considering the fact that I was with eight other people who seemed perfectly content about the situation. So I decided to just relax, realizing that I am just an intern, and that I would be the last one to get in trouble if anything happened. We got back to the office and everything seemed pretty normal. Two of the other interns who missed out on this lunch questioned why I was gone so long and I explained to them I really didn't have a choice. As the long lunch incident ended, another ethical issue arose. What was I supposed to mark down on my time sheet for the day? It would have looked really bad if I wrote that I was on lunch break for four hours, yet that would be telling the truth. I decided that since I did not have a car to leave from the lunch after an hour (I had no choice) I would just say that I worked my full eight hours. There are several different alternative outcomes that could have happened in my story. Firstly, I could have spoken up and asked someone to take me back to the office after an hour. This may have caused some agitation on the part of my fellow workers as someone who might have wanted to stay would have to drive me back to the office. On top of that, they may have formed opinions about me as being a

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