Ali Jamison is the controller at Williams Supply Company, a publicly traded distributor of automotive supplies. It is the end of the third quarter, and Ali is working under a deadline to get the quarterly financial statements prepared before the board of directors meeting at 2 p.m.

The board of directors approves the quarterly financial statements before they are sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Unfortunately, Ali has a bit of a problem. The debit and credit columns of the general ledger trial balance do not balance. She is certain that this is a simple mistake that someone made in recording a journal entry, but she just doesn’t have time to look for the mistake. In order to make the deadline, Ali decides to force the trial balance into balance by adding the $85,000 that she is out of balance to the Inventory account. Because inventory is the company’s largest asset, Ali justified her actions by thinking that this wouldn’t make a difference to anyone looking at the financial statements. She wished she had more time to look for the mistake, but the clock is ticking away.

Requirement 1. Is there any evidence of unethical behavior in this case? Explain your answer.

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