Dada Adefolami

ETHICAL CONFLICTS AND DILEMMAS
As the number of human interactions in business is infinite, it follows that professional business consultants will be faced with conflicts of interest and ethical dilemmas that they have to address.

Conflicts of interest arise from various sources. The consultant may be asked to:
1. take a decision on a matter in which the individual has a personal involvement, such as where the consultant has a family or personal relationship with the client
2. advise a company that is in direct competition with an existing client
3. Support two clients who are in competition with one another.

The Code should provide clear guidance on conflicts of interest, states thatindividual should not accept engagements in which such conflicts arise, or even where there is a possibility of such conflicts arising. Consultant should evaluate the threats arising from conflicts and apply relevant safeguards against the threats materialising. If in doubt, the consultant should disclose the conflict to relevant parties.

Ethical dilemmas arise when the consultant has to consider two or more seemingly incompatible ethical obligations. For example:
1. He may be asked by a manager to remain silent about certain matters that would have an adverse impact on the financial accounts of an organisation, thereby testing the consultant’s loyalty to the manager on the one hand, and his responsibilities as a professional on the other.
2. He may consider that the policies of his employer are unethical and may find it difficult to reconcile personal values with those of the organisation
3. He may be advising a longstanding client who is also a personal friend, only to discover that one of the client’s family is behaving dishonestly, thereby playing the bond of friendship against the professional duty to give objective, truthful advice.

Below framework is through which ethical dilemmas may be addressed. When faced with ethical conflicts, the decision taker should consider:

1. The facts of the situation
2. The ethical principles involved
3. Related fundamental principles
4. Relevant internal procedures
5. The alternative courses of action
6. Consequences of each alternative course of action.

Let digesting on deferent types of leadership: A leadership style is a leader’s style of providing direction, implementing plans, and motivating people. There are many different leadership styles that can be exhibited by leaders in the political, business or other fields

Transformational leadership is a style of leadership where the leader works with employees to identify the needed change, creating a vision to guide the change through inspiration, and executing the change in tandem with committed members of the group.

Transactional Leadership, also known as managerial leadership, focuses on the role of supervision, organization, and group performance; transactional leadership is a style of leadership in which the leader promotes compliance of his/her followers through both rewards and punishments.

An authoritarian leadership style is being used when a leader dictates policies and procedures, decides what goals are to be achieved, and directs and controls all activities without any meaningful participation by the subordinates. This leader has full control of the team leaving low autonomy within the group.

Servant leadership is both a leadership philosophy and set of leadership practices. Traditional leadership generally involves the accumulation and exercise of power by one at the “top of the pyramid.” By comparison, the servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop Servant leadership is a very popular leadership model. It was developed by Robert K. Greenleaf in 1970. The servant leader serves the people he/she leads, which implies that employees are an end in themselves rather than a means to an organizational purpose or bottom line.and perform as highly as possible.

Finally
Ethics is not an easy subject but one that has become critically important in a business environment in which failure to adhere to proper standards can have a devastating effect on organisations, investors, suppliers, employees, customerand, of course, a country all over. Looking back over the past years in Nigeria, there have been several high-profile scandals that have all involved the human ethical failings deal to corruption to some degree. Perhaps this is one of the very reasons why government must constantly restate their commitment to ethical values and high standards of moral behaviour in the offices. The system behavioral ethics is a new field of social scientific research that seeks to understand how people actually behave when confronted with ethical dilemmas. It refers to behavior that is judged according to generally accepted norms of behavior.

Ethics is very important since it is an essential part of the basic civilized society, so the society with lack of ethics will fail sooner or later. Ethics are important because without ethics people would not have ideas of right and wrong. Ethics help to make the society more stable. ethics help to choose right actions over wrong one.
Organizational culture encompasses values and behaviors that “contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organization.”

Dada Suraju Adefolami, Professor of Finance, School of Business Administration, UNEM University, Costa Rica, is a Finance / management Consultant and Certified Forensic Accountant. You can reach him via: [email protected]: 08052043855