For each of the situations listed, identify the primary standard from the IMA Statement of Ethical Professional Practice that is violated (competence, confidentiality, integrity, or credibility).
1. The CEO of a small company visits a competitor’s dumpster and takes several trash bags containing discarded papers and reports. The CEO directs Ivan to go through the competitor’s trash to find any information about the competitor’s costs for a con-tract coming up for bid. Ivan goes through the papers to find the information because he does not want to lose his job.
2. Blue Heron Mobile operates in a highly competitive environment. Cost information is highly confidential since most jobs are obtained through a bidding process based on variable costing, or in some cases absorption costing. Steve Nunez is the manager of the Accounting Department of Blue Heron Mobile. He neglects to talk with his new hires about the confidentiality of data, nor is there a formal policy in place about non- disclosure.
3. Natasha is an accountant for Red Box Consulting. At a party, she overhears a man talking about an upcoming contract his company will be bidding on. She listens closer and hears specific variable cost information that the man shares. She returns to work the next day and shares this competitor’s cost information with her friend, who is working on preparing Red Box Consulting’s bid.
4. Curtis struggled through regression analysis in his college courses. Now his manager has asked him to run a regression analysis to create a model for predicting overhead costs. He runs the regression and creates the model. He gives his manager the cost equation for overhead costs, even though he does not really understand it or have any way of checking to see if he did it correctly. He is hesitant to ask for help because he just started this job and he wants to look impressive.
5. Alyssa does not disclose on the financial statements that variable costing, rather than absorption costing, was used.