WorldCom case

nonparticipatory partner. The terminated partner will will complet Ethics Paper Questions 1. What are the overall consequences of the choices made at WorldCom - to employees, to shareholders and to other stakeholders (you may need to seek out other sources to find out the specifics). 2. Describe the different choices made by Cynthia Cooper and Betty Vinson. 3. Analyze the decisions made by these two women based on the ethical approaches discussed in the text and in class. 4. Analyze the decisions made by these two women using the cardinal virtues and accounting codes of conduct. 5. What were the consequences to Cynthia Cooper and Betty Vinson both personally and professionally? Consider what happened to them during the time of the articles as well as doing research on what has happened to them since. 6. Try to put yourselves in the situation of these women and suggest improvements, if any, to the ethical decisions made by these two women that you would make based on your analysis above. How would things have turned out differently? 7. What do you recommend that would make it more likely that accountants would make ethical choices when confronted with them? Cynthia Cooper CLINTON, Miss. -- Sitting in his cubicle at WorldCom Inc. headquarters one afternoon in May, Gene Morse stared at an accounting entry for $500 million in computer expenses. He couldn't find any invoices or documentation to back up the stunning number. "Oh my gosh," he muttered to himself. The auditor immediately took his discovery to his boss, Cynthia Cooper, the company's vice president of internal audit. "Keep going," Mr. Morse says she told him. A series of obscure tips last spring had led Ms. Cooper and Mr. Morse to suspect that their employer was cooking its books. Armed with accounting skills and determination, Ms. Cooper and her team set off on their own to figure out whether their hunch was correct. Often working late at night to avoid detection by their bosses, they combed through hundreds of thousands of accounting entries, crashing the company's computers in the process. By June 23, they had unearthed $3.8 billion in misallocated expenses and phony accounting entries. It all added up to an accounting fraud, acknowledged by the company, that turned out to be the largest in