How to Answer: Describe to me a time when you faced an ethical dilemma regarding your work.
Advice and answer examples written specifically for an Accounting job interview.
5. Describe to me a time when you faced an ethical dilemma regarding your work.
How to Answer
This is one of the most important answers you'll ever give to an employer. Being trustworthy with someone's money is what makes or breaks an Accountant's career. That's why most states now have an Ethics test you must pass in to obtain a CPA. You always have to be discreet and ethical. That means if your company is doing something illegal you must stop it or at least try to.
If you have a coworker or someone doing something illegal or that could hurt the company, you're ethically obligated to do something about it. Nowadays, people think of it as ratting or being a whistleblower, but imagine if it was your money they were stealing. Wouldn't you want someone to tell you? Corporations are not faceless. They employ millions of people who are affected by theft and embezzlement. All major accounting scandals have cost thousands of people their jobs, life savings, and livelihoods, so it's not okay to ignore an issue simply because it doesn't directly impact you.
Written by Bobbi Witt on January 8th, 2021
Entry Level
"I've never run into this professionally, but when I was a kid, I had a teacher who didn't get along with my friend's mom. She'd pick on my friend during class, call her stupid, and wouldn't let her volunteer to read. The teacher was a bully and it hurt my friend badly. When her mom tried to involve the school, they didn't do anything so I went to the school board and talked to them about it. I told them how the teacher's behavior wasn't only affecting my friend, but how other students treated my friend. I told them it was unethical for someone in a position of power to bully and torment a child, and that teacher was sent for training. We didn't see her for the rest of the year, and when she came back the following year, she was much more respectful of her students and aware of how her actions reflected in her other students."
Written by Bobbi Witt on January 8th, 2021
Answer Example
"When I worked for a previous company I made friends with my manager who was the Accounting manager. We would go out for a beer after work and he would share his life with me. One day he told me that he had been upping his pay since he approved the pay raises and knew his boss never looked at the final approvals before approving because he trusted him. I knew this was wrong and I thought about it for a long time before I said something to him about it. He told me it was none of my business and we stopped hanging out. I did not want to get him fired but my loyalty was to the company not to him so I wrote a letter to HR who investigated. Eventually he was let go and he blamed me but he was stealing from the company."
Written by Bobbi Witt on January 8th, 2021
Experience
"I worked for a Tech company for about ten years and loved it. One day a stranger approached me asking questions about the company's financials. I knew there was a major sale going on with our company and didn't want to give reveal anything that could short the stock or hurt the company, so I told them our financials were posted for public view. After about a week, he came back and offered me a couple of thousand dollars to provide the current financials. I went to my boss about this and they asked me to set up a meeting with this man. When he showed up at the meeting and saw my boss and the CFO of our company, he was shocked. Turns out it was a competitor that wanted to outbid us for the subsidiary we were buying."
Written by Bobbi Witt on January 8th, 2021
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