How to Create a Culture of Honesty in the Workplace

Question 1 

Creating a culture of honesty, openness, and assistance within an organization refers to allowing all of the workers within the said organization to play their roles as per the set professional codes of conduct, which prevents their involvement in fraudulent activities. Having been attended to by physicians before, a good class of workers here would the many doctors and nurses who without question set aside their personal differences and embark on the performance of their duties, based on predetermined professional codes of conduct. 

Question 2 

Codes of conduct and conflict of interest forms are often called “soft” controls, and this is simply because of how organizations initially use them to dissuade their employees from partaking of fraud. They are termed as soft because the methods that they propose for settling pertinent issues, do not cause any problems within the society, and instead, only but serve as the best channel using which to resolve the said problems ( Husereau, Drummond, Petrou, Carswell, Moher, Greenberg & Loder, 2013) . 

Question 3 

Having a good internal control system does mean that the top management of an organization is doing their job as required. In that, these managers have all of the information that necessarily concerns their organizations, for purposes of proper decision making on their part. Some examples of internal controls in an organization are the detection and prevention of fraud, the protection of business assets, and the timely preparation of financial information. 

Question 4 

Whistleblower policies are a good idea for businesses since they encourage business leaders and their juniors to act decently and in the very best interests of the organizations that they would have been employed under. Whistleblowing helps dissuade professional misconduct, given that workers are called upon to monitor each other for non-compliance with organizational codes of conduct. The main reason as to why this policies are more likely than not to lead to business growth is owed to the concerted powers bestowed upon every single employee to participate in the careful supervision of activities within the organizations within which they work ( Doran, 2016) . 

Question 5 and 6 

Accounting anomalies evidence the fact that, fraud tends to be encouraged by the inconsistent application of correct accounting procedures within given organizations. This is most especially the case when very little is done to fast track inventories. Some of the problems that are common are usually highlighted by unrecorded transactions, inventory shortages and unprecedented levels of returns ( Goldmann, 2010) . The institution of internal control is one of the ways through which businesses could encourage integrity among their employees. Weak internal controls are in most cases taken advantage of by workers to commit fraudulent acts, given that they make it technically impossible for acts of fraud to be successfully detected. Thirdly, organizations might conclude that some of their employees are acting in fraudulent manners, if these very employees change their lifestyles in ways that cannot be explained. Fraudsters will tend to spend the money that they have stolen in improving their welfares. 

Question 7 

The elements that vitally make up a good fraud report are information that pertains to the scam, details of the allegations and of the parties involved, the scope of the fraud, case diary, interview reports, evidence, and recommendations to be put in place in view of encouraging accountability at the concerned firm. A fraud report may only help with investigations and with the implementation of reforms if it has these elements. 

Question 8 

The Tone at the Top represents the commitment that any given management shows towards the issues of integrity and openness of its operations. It highlights the responsibility that an organization’s top management shows with respect to controlling this very organization’s activities. 

Question 9 

The audit committee plays the critical role of ensuring the efficient application of control systems within most business organizations. It ensures that the performance of all internal auditors is of good quality, and that it is consistently applied in accordance to the standards of performance that would have been set by a business’ managers ( Rejda, 2011) . It evaluates that auditors are objective and that they exercise independent authority over all of the accounting information that they generate. The management ensures the implementation of control systems that can efficiently help prevent fraud. In turn, internal auditors inform managerial leaders of the possibilities of fraud occurring within their organizations, therefore helping them with policy making, usually as per the information that they would have received from the Directorate. External auditors analyze the control mechanisms in an organization, in view of determining flaws that might attract fraudulent actions. 

Question 10 

The very first one of the five steps of managing the business risk of fraud is fraud governance. At this stage, the organization takes the initiative of practicing regular fraud risk assessments. Then there also is fraud risk assessment which highlights all of the checks that are made so as to determine the relationship that exists between an organization’s employees and her resources. The third one of these is fraud prevention, and this usually involves a business putting in place policies that could help avoid the recurrence of given fraudulent activities, which would have been identified by now, going into the future. Coming closely after this, in fourth place, is fraud detection, which actively deploys measures using which an organization could keep itself from being affected by fraudulent activities, and these may include but are not limited to whistleblowing. Then finally, there us monitoring and reporting. At this point, it is advisable that anyone who comes into contact with fraud makes a timely report of the same, in order to allow good time for the institution of reform ( Rejda, 2011) . 

Question 11 

ERM is an acronym for environmental resource management, and it is primarily concerned with monitoring business activities in relation to the environmental factors that they are influenced by, and the implications that result from them. For this reason, ERM is a leading global provider of information that pertains to matters of health and social safety, together with the risk factors that tend to accompany them. It provides medical practitioners with a basis acting upon which they could provide consultancy services. 

Question 12 

Risk assessment is the systematic analysis of business processes, for purposes identifying any of issues that could significantly affect a business’ operations. The steps that are usually taken here include the identification of the hazard, the projection of who might be harmed, the determination of remedy measures to risks that should have already been spelt out, and the appropriate documentation of the findings made, together with their review in order for any new updates to be made to them. 

Question 13 

Technology provides businesses with the option of using the Excel Query wizard, using which they could detect and therefore act in ways as to prevent fraudulent activities. Besides this, the Desktop technology serves as a form of remedy for the kinds of fraudulent activities that are committed by manipulating journal entries in addition to all other original entry points that are usually used in the creation of financial statements. 

Question 14 

The FCPA (Foreign Corruption Practices Act) is a legal Act by the US government, which aims to contain corruption, undertaken by foreign individuals who would have been trusted with managing the foreign operations of US multinational companies. On the contrary, the UKs “Bribery Act” applies to all persons that hold the dishonest intentions of obtaining favors from secondary parties that they’ll have unduly influenced. The difference between these two comes in mainly in the spectrum of their application. The Bribery Act covers a wider range of application as opposed to the FCPA ( Gauci & Fisher, 2011) . 

References 

Doran, M. (2016). How to survive as a whistle-blower. Nature , 532 (7599), 405-405. 

Gauci, G., & Fisher, J. (2011). The UK bribery act and the US FCPA: The key differences. Association of Corporate Counsel. 

Goldmann, P. (2010). Financial Services Anti-Fraud Risk and Control Workbook . John Wiley & Sons. 

Husereau, D., Drummond, M., Petrou, S., Carswell, C., Moher, D., Greenberg, D., ... & Loder, E. (2013). Consolidated health economic evaluation reporting standards (CHEERS) statement. Cost Effectiveness and Resource Allocation , 11 (1), 6. 

Rejda, G. E. (2011). Principles of risk management and insurance . Pearson Education India.