Question

Suppose that you were sent to prison for a crime you did not commit. While in prison, the warden learns that you have taken financial accounting and are really good at “keeping the books.” In fact, you are so good at accounting that you offer to teach other inmates basic financial skills that they’ll use someday after being released.

However, the warden plans to use his position of authority at the prison to steal money. He uses prisoners as low-cost labor to do projects around town. Because other legitimate companies cannot compete with these low costs, they bribe the warden not to bid on jobs. The warden asks you to use your accounting skills to participate in a financial scam by falsifying documents and creating a false set of accounting records that will allow the warden’s bribes to go undetected by state prison authorities. In other words, he wants you to “cook the books.”

When you object to helping with this scam, the warden threatens to end your tutoring sessions with other inmates and sentence you to solitary confinement. To further sway your decision, he promises that if you’ll help, he’ll make your prison life easy by giving you special meals and other favors.

What would you do in this situation? If you help the warden steal money, you benefit personally and the other prisoners benefit by your continued tutoring sessions. However, the warden often physically abuses some of the prisoners, and helping him steal money means that he’ll remain in his position for a long time, continuing his abusive behavior.

To see how Tim Robbins’s character handled this situation, check out the movie The Shawshank Redemption.

Answer 1

In this situation I will help the warden to “cook the books”. I know that this act is illegal as well as unethical but I will do it with an ethical intention and end in mind. I will “cook the books” of the warden to win his trust and confidence and once I have the full faith and trust of the warden I will wait for the right time in which to expose the wrong doings of the warden to the higher authorities.

If I deny warden’s request of cooking the books then the warden will find some other method and means to get about his scam and thus my denying helping the warden will lead to no good. Hence I will become a part of this wrong doing and device a scheme that can easily expose the wrong doings of the warden and that will ensure that legal action is taken against the warden for his wrongdoings.