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. Audrey is an accountant for Simply Green Consulting. At a party, she overhears a person talking about an upcoming contract on which their company will be bidding.

She listens closer and hears specific variable cost information that the person shares.

She returns to work the next day and shares this competitor’s cost information with her friend, who is working on preparing Simply Green Consulting’s bid.

2. Manuel does not disclose on the financial statements that variable costing, rather than absorption costing, was used.

3. Atwood 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. Ruben Gilner is the manager of the Accounting Department of Atwood Mobile. Gilner neglects to talk with the department’s new hires about the confidentiality of data, nor is there a formal policy in place about nondisclosure.

4. The CEO of a small company visits a competitor’s dumpster and takes several trash bags containing discarded papers and reports. The CEO directs Kareem to go through the competitor’s trash to find any information about the competitor’s costs for a contract coming up for bid. Kareem goes through the papers to find the information because he does not want to lose his job.

5. Tyler 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. Tyler is hesitant to ask for help because he just started this job and he wants to look impressive.