Dilemma of an Accountant

Dilemma of an Accountant
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Abstract
Accountants always face dilemmas that not only conflict with their personal values, but also conflict with accounting principles. Daniel Porter met such an experience while auditing a real estate subsidiary for Bakers. As a result, he had a conflicting opinion with his immediate Boss (Oliver Freeman). Dan noticed the largest real estate property on the balance sheet was overvalued. His recommendation to Freeman was rejected even though he was ethically right. Bakers and the real estate subsidiary were the main stakeholders in the conflict. Five alternatives are proposed as solutions to the problem with reporting the case to a higher authority as the last solution. It is critical that the conflict affected two stakeholders: Bakers and the real estate subsidiary. This depicted Bakers as an organization that has no regards to ethical accounting.
Introduction
The public always expects a defined level of professionalism from accountants despite the reality that the scope of their work exposes them to ethical dilemmas. This owes to the reality that accountants hold senior positions that involve them in major business decisions within organizations. Such decisions are not easy to make and may often result in stressful experiences for accountants. One such situation is the knowledge of potential wrongdoing or actual wrongdoing.
Dan, who is an ambitious accountant, rose through the ranks owing to his personal philosophies and hard work at Bakers. Recently, Dan received an assignment that had great prospects for a promotion with Bakers. He was supposed to work under Oliver Freeman, who was the project senior. It is notable that the project required Dan to audit a wholly owned real estate subsidiary. Consequently, Dan completed his assignment three days to the deadline and submitted a report to Freeman (Brooks and Dunn, 2011). This paper provides guidelines on the possible solutions to the dilemma of pressure to involve in falsified activities using Dan’s case as a case study.
Major Problems
Dan completed all the difficult sections of his task. However, he noticed that the largest real estate property on the balance sheet was overvalued. This owes to the truth that the balance sheet valued the property at $2 million while Dan’s estimate valued the property at $100,000. Furthermore, the property was in undesirable neighborhood and was unoccupied for several years. Consequently, Dan discussed with the Sub’s managers by advising them to write down the property by $1,900,000. The Sub’s managers refused to write down the property because the managers were prospecting to rent out the property (Brooks and Dunn, 2011). As a result, Dan submitted a recommendation to Freeman with a subject to opinion proposal on the books of accounts. However, Freeman objected the recommendation and asked Dan to correct the subject to opinion proposal in ...