Ethic Decision Making

To be able to make more ethical decisions in the future, I think it is necessary to review past ethical decisions. To be honest with myself I think it is important to review both my good and bad decisions. This way I hope I can avoid the bad decisions and increase the times I make good decisions.

Good Decision
When I first came home from my mission, as I discussed in a previous article, I worked as a door to door sales representative for Winder Farms. At first I loved how upfront the company was and how honest the sale was. The stipulations were very clear, and I consistently had one of the lowest churn rate, a sign that my customer's knew everything upfront. Unfortunately, Winder briefly changed their sales program so that sales reps could not give a coupon as good as a customer could get online. An important part of the sale, is telling the customer that you are giving them the best possible deal. I decided to walk away from the company.

This was really difficult for me at the time because I was making a lot more money than I ever had before. I feel that I had the strength to make the right decision because I was still reading my scriptures every day. I feel that just reading my scriptures every day kept me from justifying an even slightly dishonest sales pitch.

Bad Decision
Last year I was preparing an income statement for a small local retail company. They told me that they wanted to estimate their ending inventory so that their cost of goods sold would be higher. They intimidated me by stating that it was their CPA's recommendation that they make the estimate. I justified it to myself, that I was just the bookkeeper and that I could only book the transactions they way that they asked. Finally, instead of booking just what they asked I acted as if their ending inventory was equal to their beginning inventory. This made their cost of goods sold equal to their purchases. This was not as good as they wanted, but neither was it honest. I should have been strong enough to walk away the second they hinted at anything dishonest. I think I allowed by self to be bullied and to rationalize my actions because I was busy during tax season and let my scripture study slide.