Ethics business case study: Your manager has given you assurances that work in progress has increased by 200% during the current reporting period, and instructed you to report this in the monthly management accounts. Evidence then becomes available to indicate that work in progress had not increased at anywhere near the rate advised by your manager.

You are a reporting accountant in a company. Your immediate manager is a very forceful, domineering individual and you have accepted his views over the last two years on the level of work in progress. 

He has given you specific assurances that work in progress has increased by 200% during the current reporting period, and instructed you to report this level in the monthly management accounts. The year end draft financial accounts show that the organisation has only just met its business plan financial targets.