Summary: Paramedic Ethics For Computer Professionals

I ran into an ethical issue when I worked at a bus manufacturer somewhat similar to what George faced in the “Paramedic Ethics for Computer Professionals” paper. I was the operations supervisor and one of my duties was to execute, monitor and troubleshoot daily, nightly and weekend systems jobs. One of the major jobs was the Material Requirements Planning (MRP) process. The MRP jobs would examine the current and future orders to determine the materials needed for the next three to six months. We ran the job on the weekend and on rare occasions at night during the week. The rare occurrences were generally to take a much further view and see what the requirements would be for the next year to three years based on current and projected orders.
One week the CFO wanted to have a special MRP job created based on fictitious data to use as an example for a presentation.
Up to this point the CFO had never been a part of the MRP process request, but my director insisted that the MRP was created and executed as requested. I created, ran the job and supplied the requested data requested by the CFO. About a week later a request to create different versions of the MRP jobs needed to be processed each night for four nights. The request originated from the CFO and the described purpose was for another “presentation”. I asked the MRP forecaster why we needed the MRP runs and if he knew we were completing these tasks for the CFO. The forecaster told me that he was well aware and was directed to make the forecasts based on the CFO’s input. The CFO was working on the data for upcoming corporate internal audit and an IRS audit. The CFO was having us run different scenarios to see which one would have the best forecast and work with the numbers he was
presenting.
I immediately contacted my director and explained what I found out and shared my concern that the CFO may be working to produce fraudulent data for the auditors. The director listened to my plea and told me to complete the request or the CFO might do something that could harm my job security. I contemplated the issue for a couple hours and even created the MRP job to run that night. After hard consideration, I pulled the job and had a face-to-face meeting with my director. I again voiced my concern and that the fraud could come back to bite him, me and others in the IT department. My director again understood my position and even agreed, but stated I needed to complete the request or be relieved of my duties for that week and he would have the lead operator handle the request. I explained the situation to the lead operator to make sure she knew what could happen if I decided to not complete the request. She did not have an issue with the MRP requests, since she feared for her job. I felt like I was on an island with nowhere to go. I ended up talking with the director of purchasing, who was the forecaster’s boss and the VP of plant operations. Both told me I should create and execute the job as requested, but the VP stated that it would be prudent to add a comment in the code about who requested the job and the reason for the request. I decided to create and run the jobs, but with a couple caveats. I made the CFO submit his request in writing and had my boss sign off on it. I also did as the VP suggested and added the requestor and reason to the job runs and pulled a backup of the system prior to the run, so I had some kind of backup in case the job was removed or comments were removed after the job executed.
I did get a small reprimand for going over my boss’s head to the VP, but it was minor. The CFO received his reports and ended up getting a larger reprimand by our division executive VP for looking at ways to “pull the wool over the auditor’s eyes”. The CFO had tried to make my life miserable for a few months, but nothing ever worked. The CFO was monitored for the next several months and ended up being asked to resign when the division was sold to another company.