The scenarios below border ontheapplication of ethical principles of accountants in the public

sector context.

a)You are an Assistant Internal Audit Officer of a covered entity, and you have carried out

an internal audit of some sensitive operations of the entity. The audit covers allowances

and bonuses paid or due for payment to the Board Chairman and other members of the

board of governors, including the Chief Executive Officer. The transactions and events

smear profligacyand corruption, given the current financial difficulties that the entity

faces. You took a snapshot of the audit evidence with your phone cameras and posted it on

your oldschool WhatsApp platform to buttress a claim of corruption you have made. This

has attracted a lot of traffic to your post and one of the group members, who is a Journalist

decided to spark a bigger debate on the matter in mainstream media. Your post became

viral within 24 hours.

b)In the early part of December2022, your Municipal Assembly received an unplanned

visitation of the top political masters, who claimed to be on a political campaign and have

decided to pay a "courtesy call" on the Municipal Chief Executive and the Assembly. The

Chief Executive quickly asked that a financial package (brown envelope) be prepared for

them. The amount is quite significant but unbudgeted. The visitors left the Assembly with

a high commendation from the Chief Executive. Thereafter, heasked the Director of

Finance to process the necessary documentation to support the brown envelope

transactions. The Director of Finance expressed some misgivings about the transactions

but advised the Accountant to record the brown envelope transaction as goods and

servicesunder travel and transport, which he did without any objection.

c)A Director of Finance of a covered entity has been atpost for the last two years, and it has

become an open secretin the entity that he does not know his job. Since his assumption,

the entity has been not able to submit the required quarterly and annual public accounts to

the Controller and Accountant General. Auditors always raised many audit observations

indicting the entity for bad accounting. The financial records were in shamble, the financial

statements were in disarray and the cash management was unfortunate. In fact, he secured

the job based on his political activism rather than accounting professionalism.

d)The Director of Finance was touted as the smartest accounting person in Ghana by the

Chief Executive Officer of the entity. He claims that he always keeps his back and delivers

him from the corrupt league of public officers. He brags:

This my Director of Finance, I am yet to meet his kind of accountant. He

understands the language, just discuss it with him and it is done. Whatever you want. The guy is just smart of the smartest. Even Domelevohimself

can audit him and the report will be clean. I just love this guy, because he

just knowshow to cook the books well.

Required:

Discuss, for each of the scenarios (i) to (iv), one ethical code of professional accountants that has

been breached and suggest a safeguard for each of them.