Managing Fraud Risk: A Practical Guide for Directors and Managers

Answers to the Quiz

Fraud Awareness Quiz – Question 10

Imagine that you are the Head of Internal Audit and are faced with the following situation: by chance you learn that one of your sales executives provided false and inflated academic qualifications on his CV and application form when he applied to join the company two years ago. Since he joined he has made an excellent impression and last year he hit all his bonus targets making him one of the company's most highly rated managers. What do you do?

I like to ask delegates on my courses this question because it goes straight to the heart of one of the tensions in business that can interfere from time to time with good governance and good ethics – that is the difficulty of reconciling short-term and long-term objectives by organisations under the day-to-day pressures of business life. It also picks up, almost as a by-product, the concept of zero tolerance that many companies will say is their policy when dealing with such issues as fraud, deception and inappropriate business practices in the workplace.

There are no right and wrong answers when looking at a question like this. Every organisation will need to look to its own codes and value statements to find the reference point that will provide it with the approach that is best suited to its own individual circumstances. Nevertheless, there are certain answers that are more powerful than others when looking at the question from a counter-fraud perspective.

There are two broad and ...