A navy officer, who was also authorized to use the government purchase card, decided to use the card to purchase his items. The card was supposed to be used to buy items for the command. After noticing that he could purchase his personal items using the card and sell them for a profit, he conspired with another officer in the navy to implement the fraud at a broader level in the military. After one of the officers in the high ranks discovered what was happening, he covered for them because one of them was his nephew. He protected them from finding themselves in trouble for defrauding the government of its property. He ordered the purchase of the missing items. However, the navy auditors noticed something was going wrong and, in the end, revealed the fraud scheme that had occurred. They also identified that the senior officer was involved in covering for them to protect them from trouble. As a result, the high-rank army officer was fired for covering the crime together with the fraud perpetrators who were brought to justice.
The decision to defraud the government by the two navy officers and the cover done by the high-rank navy were unethical. Fraud is unethical because it involves deception ( Irianto et al., 2018 ). From a utilitarian perspective, an action is right or moral if it causes happiness to the most significant number of individuals ( Irwin, 2020 ). Therefore, the activities of the three individuals caused harm to the majority, including the military, the government, and citizens who pay taxes to enable purchasing of the property. From a deontological perspective, the actions of the three navy officers are unethical because they are against the moral code. According to deontological ethics, the right step is the one that follows the correct rule of behavior (Poff, 2018). The actions were against the moral principles of responsibility, accountability, and honesty.
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References
Irianto, G., Novianti, N., Rosalina, K., & Firmanto, Y. (2018). Integrity, unethical behavior, and the tendency of fraud. EKUITAS (Jurnal Ekonomi dan Keuangan) , 16 (2), 144-163. https://doi.org/10.24034/j25485024.y2012.v16.i2.213
Irwin, T. (2020). Utilitarianism and its critics. Ethics through History , 279-290. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199603701.003.0023
Poff, D. C. (2018). Deontology. Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics , 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_399-1
