Speak Up or Stay Silent: A New Employee Confronts Strange Sales Reports

Natalia Garcia $23$

Natalia Garcia $23$ graduated with a major in economics and minor in international business and was a $2022-23$

Hackworth Fellow with the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

Tre is a recent college graduate who works in the finance and analytics department of a large publicly traded software

company. Recently, Tre discovered an alarming discrepancy in the recording of sales which raised concerns about the

company$$s commitment to truthful reporting to investors.

The software company specializes in providing a B$2$B database that supplies data to other businesses. A company may

want to purchase the database from this software company in order to drive their own business growth, accelerate their

sales process, or achieve more ROI. The cost of this product depends on the extent of data provided, so if a business

wants to purchase advanced B$2$B intelligence, this may include data pertinent to department budgets and org charts,

technographics, and real$-$time alerts related to company events. However, a business also may purchase the basic data

package, which includes traditional demographic and firmographic details. Advanced functionality products are costlier$,$

and selling more will indicate stronger growth for the software company.

This is Tre$$s first job out of college and he$$s been working at the company for $10$ weeks. He was recently tasked with a

new project to develop a visual showing the number of customers who had purchased products, and the dollar amount

spent on products with advanced functionality vs$.$ products with basic functionality.

But in his research to prepare the showing he came across a pattern of reporting sales information that disturbed him. He

saw, for instance, that a customer$$s finance department had

p u r c h a s e d $ $200,000$ w o r t h o f $$ A d v a n c e d $$ p r o d u c t s f r o m T r e $$ s c o m p a n y $,$ a n d t h a t t h e s a m e

customer$$s operations department purchased $$300,000$ worth of $$Basic$$ products. No problem there: Given the different

purposes of each department of the customer$$s company, the different purchases made good sense.

But what troubled Tre was how his own company recorded the sales of the two distinct products with different prices. In

effect, the entire $$500,000$ worth of sales were classified as dollars spent on $$advanced$$ functionality products. And then

he looked at more instances of how such sales were recorded. And more. Tre realized that every single sale of the

advanced and basic versions of the database were listed as sales of the advanced database only. The

misrepresentations amounted to millions of dollars.

Tre knows that this metric goes to their board of directors every quarter, and it also goes out to investors on their

investing call. Institutions who hold stock in this software company may look at this metric while determining the

company$$s overall performance or potential for growth.

Tre feels that the right thing to do would be to speak up and try to fix the way they report this metric. He$$s deeply troubled

by what appears to be dishonesty, as it conflicts with his personal integrity and moral values. And, as an employee, he

grapples with the unsettling realization that investors may be receiving misleading information to make the company$$s

sales look stronger than they in fact are.

However, he$$s aware that he$$s new to the company and doesn$$t want to ruffle any feathers or create any problems. He

also wonders if there$$s some good explanation for the way that the sales are recorded. Plus, it$$s a stressful time, in which

many tech lay$-$offs are taking place$$ his own company even has announced that there would be layoffs and, as a new

employee, he knows that he may be among the first employees considered for firing. He does not want to do anything to

risk losing his job right now because he has student debt to pay off on top of all of the usual and hefty expenses like rent.

What should Tre do$?$

Please identify what you think are the most significant ethical values at stake in Tre's decision? Examine

these using the lens of Moral Unity, Immorality and Aristotle's Theory of Responsibility and create a linkage

with the case study above.