Eileen Foster was the Executive Vice President of Fraud Risk Management at Countrywide, and later served in the role of Senior Vice President of the Mortgage Fraud Investigation Division at Bank of America after the two companies merged (Foster, n.d.). It was her responsibility to investigate mortgage origination fraud and reporting suspicious activity to regulators and the company’s Board of Directors. After several years of seeing a lot of suspicious activity and blatant acts of fraud she found that the company was playing party to this activity. Any employee who reported fraud and wrongdoing to Employee Relations were being transferred, demoted, harassed or terminated. When Foster reported her concerns to Countrywide’s Internal audit to investigate, the company not only chose to conceal her allegations from Bank of America, but it also directed employee relations to investigate Foster for wrong doing.
To begin looking at whistle-blowing and speaking out against major problems in society, one should look back to where it began. Lincoln Steffens was a muckraker during the Progressive Era (1890-1920), meaning he exposed corruption in society. After graduating from the University of California, Lincoln moved to New York and became a journalist for the New York Evening Post, then soon after a managing editor at McClure's Magazine. In 1902, like many others, Lincoln promoted change and tried to give people the need for a sense of reform, earning himself the title of a muckraker. Steffens focused on corruption in politics and published “a collection of articles published from McClure’s Magazine” (Steffens 1) titled The Shame of the Cities in 1904
I enjoy reading your post; you provided sound knowledge of the ACA and NAADAC Code of Ethics. “The NAADAC Code of Ethics was written to govern the conduct of its member and it is the accepted standard of conduct for addiction professionals certified by the National Certification Commission.” Therefore, it is the responsibility of the addiction professional to safeguard the integrity of the counseling relationship and to ensure that the client is provided with services that are most beneficial. In all areas of function, the addiction professional is likely to encounter individuals who are vulnerable and exploitable. In such relationships he/she seeks to nurture and support the development of a relationship of equals rather than to take unfair
From what this case turns out to be, as determined by the facts surrounding it, if our organization was set up such that our supervisors have the power to fire employees under their supervision, the company could have potentially found its entangled in a Sarbanes-Oxley lawsuit. There is no doubt that had this morally upright secretary been fired for standing her ground in the face of our rogue supervisor 's demand for her to cook the books the company could have been in violation not only for attempting to file a fraudulent expense account but for taking retaliatory action against her for refusing to do such. On the other hand had the secretary connived with her boss, the supervisor and prepared the false expense report, the company 's reputation could have again been in violation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. A federal law that prohibits publicly traded companies such as ours, in engaging in fraudulence accounting and financial practices. Such a scenario could have ruined the corporation 's reputation and expose it to an enormous fine from the Federal Trade Commission.
One of the most important rules to be aware of with publicly traded companies is the Sarbones Oxley Act Section 806. Sox act protects “whistle-blowers” from receiving any negative actions regarding stepping up and reporting actions/practices
The NASW Code of Ethics’ Connection to the Sanchez family Case The Sanchez family is a multigenerational family, not unlike other families living in the United States. Current person-in-environment conditions and lifestyle choices hinder the capability to improve their quality of life. Intervention from competent and committed professionals will change the dynamic challenges the family faces.
You succinctly described how the subculture in the workplace can create instances like Detective Serpico experienced. As you note, humans have a hard time dealing with being told they have done wrong as it is connected with shame. Effective leadership is necessary to provide integrity and accountability. Detective Serpico’s testimony proves how dangerous it can be for whistleblowers in an organization that has an unethical subculture. As a profession, law enforcement is one in which limited transparency is required to protect justice.
Mr. Carnell explained his outrage effectively, while praising the employees who came to work and offering a solution to the problem he faced with the ones he scolded. On the other hand, Mr. Carnell lack the ability to fully understand how this memo and its actions would impact others. Although, Mr. Carnell thought he wrote ethically, he neglected to fully comprehend why certain employees failed to report to work. In reality, employees might have had adequate reasons for not reporting to their duties at PNC Bank.
In regards to the scenario of the patient Cindy who had an affair while being married, one of the red flags that I noticed was AACC Code 1-143 counseling with family, friends and acquaintances. According to the scenario, Cindy, as well as her family, attend the same church as the counselor, but also know the counselor very well. This was a breach in ethics on the counselor’s part, because in the AACC code, it states in Code 1-143, “Christian counselors do not provide counseling to close family or friends.” (Clinton, Ohlschlager, and Hart; pg. 269). The counselor has already broken the ethics code by giving Cindy counseling advice, which is part of the AACC code 1-145 (pg.269).
One of them, It was written at that time by Richard De George, in his text “Business Ethics”5. A different approach is supported by Michael Davies in his work “Some Paradoxes of Whistleblowing”6 (Appear in the magazine Business and Professional Ethics Journal). David model know as (the theory of complicity)6 lists certain conditions to complete: 1) the disclosure must come from the institution where the agent works, 2) the agent must be a person working in the institution, 3) the organization, being legitimate practical actions that are ethically questionable, 4) the agent believes that he will be accomplice morally unacceptable acts if he doesn’t disclosed publicly. Also Davies consider that, the points 3 and 4 are understood as concrete knowledge, which the Agent considers justified and true (for it must have solid evidence to back their actions). It is important to mention, moreover, that several countries have legislated with varied and disparate impact regard to Whistleblowing in particular as regards the protection of persons that they have put into practice (Whistleblowing Protection Act, US, Public Interest Disclosure, UK and Australia, or the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act, in Canada)7.
The ongoing issue of unethical practices in justice professions can be very unidentifiable if a person does not know what to look for. To be an ethical person it is essential to understand what it means to be ethical to oneself. A person with good ethics is someone who portrays a strong moral character, with the ability to determine the difference between good and evil duties. Duties refers to the actions a person takes in order to be considered a commendable act (Pollock, 2015).
Implicit factors that influenced these officers were the organizational structure of the department, and the lack of ethical supervision. The organizational structure gave the officers freedom to steal and engage in corrupt behavior without their supervisors knowing. According to the article, Peer Effects in Unethical Behavior: Standing or Reputation, by David Pascual-Ezama, Derek Dunfield, Beatriz Gil-Gómez de Liaño, and Drazen Prelec, “evidence shows that working in an unsupervised, isolated situation under competition, can increase dishonest behavior.” The officers were surrounded by other officers who were encouraging the idea of “looking out for number one” (Albanese, 2012).
Whistle-blowing Introduction Whistle-blowing is the act taken by an employee or former employee of disclosing what he believes to be unethical or illegal behaviour taken by his employer. There are two ways in which a person can disclose information. It can be done by internal whistle-blowing or external whistle-blowing. Internal whistle-blowing would be considered when an employee discloses unethical or illegal behaviour to higher management while external whistle-blowing would be when the information was disclosed to the public. The duty to be a whistle-blower over rides the duty that you have to your client or employer.
Furthermore, (Argent & Tonts, 2014), described that Australian economy is highly applicable to the internalization as it provides the intellectual tools to effectively understand the twist which actions of desperate government can create. Hence, for the people of Australia, it is suggested that they need to choose the whistle blowing because it allows them to speak up on their rights and wages. (Youlden, Youl, Soyer, Aitken, & Baade, 2014), reported that whistle blowing is an ethical system that allows union within the organization to talk about the unethical, immoral activities in the organization. Moreover, it also refers to the time that a member of the company tells other person related to immoral and ethical practices, in case the telling
Often, employee is in dilemma whether to report the suspicious activities internally in the organization or to external bodies. In most of the cases, internal whistleblowing is better than external whistle blowing as this gives a company to rectify itself and monitor better while external whistleblowing hampers the organization’s reputation and the loyalty of the employer is questioned and the employee’s environment might become unfriendly in the organization. Sherron Watkins in Enron case is an example of internal
