Case: Brian has been working 6 months as a staff assistant for Ahmad & Co. Currently, he is assigned to the audit of Reyon Manufacturing Sdn Bhd under the supervision of Ali, an experienced audit senior. There are three auditors assigned to the audit, including Brian, Ali and a more experienced assistant Muthu. During lunch on the first day, Ali says, 'It will be necessary for us to work a few extra hours on our own time to make sure we come in on budget. This audit isn't very profitable anyway and we don't want to hurt our firm by going over budget. We can accomplish this easily by coming in a half an hour early, taking a short lunch break and working an hour or so after normal quitting time. We just won't enter that time on our time report.'. Brian recalls reading in the firm's policy manual that working hours and not charging for them on the time report is a violation of Ahmad and Co's employment policy. He also knows that seniors are paid bonuses instead of overtime whereas staffs are paid for overtime but get no bonuses. Later, when discussing the issue with Muthu, he says "Ali does this on all of his jobs. He is likely to be our firm's next audit manager. The partners think he is great because his jobs always come in under budget. He rewards us by giving us good engagement evaluations especially under the cooperative attitude category. Several of the other audit seniors follow the same practice."

Questions: Resolve the above ethical dilemma using the 6 steps approach:

1. Obtain the relevant facts.

2. Identify the ethical issues from the facts.

3. Determine who is affected by the outcome of the dilemma and how each person or group is affected.

4. Identify the alternative available to the person who must resolve the dilemma.

5. Identify the likely consequence of each alternative.

6. Decide the appropriate action.