Integrity

I've known that integrity is important and I've always been a horrible liar, but I've just recently come to realize WHY integrity is so essential in business, especially in accounting.

During my training at Pilgrim I've been given access to its books and several accounts (online and on computers) to update and edit various items. The other day Jeff Levell (CFO/internship coordinator) and I were trying to electronically file Pilgrim's Annual Report with the Department of Revenue. We were also trying to file with several other departments and governmental entities. I say "trying" because none of them were successful (online).

While we experimented with a combination of user names and passwords, it occurred to me: Wow, Jeff has got to trust me an awful lot to expose me to all this. An employer becomes extremely vulnerable in allowing its employees to touch its financial information and create/edit what goes on financial statements that creditors and investors and governments use to evaluate it. And it's my duty as an employee to steward that trust well and to foster more of it between the firm and myself. It's my duty to protect that information from bias or falsehoods.

Part of the Foster School of Business's Student Code of Conduct is to practice integrity. On multiple occasions my accounting professors and event speakers will give us scenarios and (rhetorically) ask what we should do. Since we're all students and studying a lot of theory, we can regurgitate the right answer from what we read in a book or talked about in class. But my profs/speakers don't leave it at that. They push us and make us think about it as we would in real life: Will your answer be the same when you've got a mortgage, four mouths to feed, and your boss puts your job on the line if you don't falsify the firm's financials? When is it OK to tweak the information? Their answer remains: NEVER.

Last night (or maybe it was today) I was also thinking about academic integrity: citing sources, doing the work you're assigned to do, not cheating. I'm kind of a stickler about this when it comes to writing papers - and I'm not saying that to be haughty or self-righteous; I'm just very detail-oriented and want to be able to track down info later. I used to cheat on homework in high school. I stopped doing that for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that it really end up coming back to bite me later. If I don't do the homework myself, I don't learn the material and am not as prepared for tests. I also don't have time to copy answers 'cause my schedule doesn't match up with many of my fellow students'.. haha. That and there's no guarantee that their answers are right, anyway. And can you imagine spending 10 years researching and writing documents just to have someone rip the idea off of you and get credit for all your hard work? No fun.

Anyway.. I have to go to my Information Systems class. My prof (Shaosong Ou) is hilarious. Toodles!

Jessica K. Nguyen
Junior - Accounting
Michael G. Foster School of Business
University of Washington, Seattle
accountantforAfrica.blogspot.com