Reflective Journal

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Final Reflective Journal

Andrés Enrique Vergara Ríos

Northeastern University

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        Andrés Enrique Vergara Ríos, MS Project Management, Northeastern University

        The next research paper was prepared for the class of Ethical Leadership, imparted by Professor Chris Brooks.

        Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to vergararios.a@husky.neu.edu

In this quarter, all the lessons learned in all these weeks was important. But some ones had my attention. Ethics and the law is one, the combination of words could look at same terminology, but is not, Ethics could be defined as a set of moral principles, especially ones relating to or affirming a specified group, field, or form of conduct. Law as the system of rules that a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members and may enforce by the imposition of penalties. According to Trevino, “we think of the law as reflecting society’s minimum norms and standards of business conduct, we can see a great deal of overlap between what is legal and what is ethical.” (Managing Business Ethics, P. 21). This can be interpreted as the law can be a set of norms to follow imparted by the society. My concern, that’s ok, but who make that set of norms, and how he estimates that if that the best decision to make. Another approach is that we are doing what the law said, but is ethical what we are doing, like trying to use some gaps in the system to take advantage and for example don’t pay taxes, or a less amount in contrast to the original calculation.

I’m going to share with you an example that happen to me every time in my work. The family business is an accounting and auditing firm, with more than 30 years of experience with my father as a founder and CEO of the company. When we try to give to the costumer and advice of their taxes report to the Direction of Income, they always said, “please make something to don’t pay taxes, I don’t want to loose money in that way” every single time. This is a problem for us because, first, he is our costumer, and as a service company, you need to satisfy yours. But in contrast, you have the obligation to report always all that the books in the company said. The solution, or always what the costumer agree to do is, tell him that taxes he don’t want to pay, already you charge them, so your money is not affected, also, if the direction of income, see something wrong or something that not match, he is going to prison. Other solution, that my father teaches me, when the costumer, still want to break the law, just tell him, you can’t do what he wants, it is possible to him to find a new accountant, because the ethics that the company follow all this 30 years, is not going to be broke because one customer don’t want to pay. This is an example of self- interest, according to the textbook, “humans are purely rational economic actors who makes choices solely on the basis of cold cost-benefits analyses.” (Managing Business Ethics, P.22).