Ethical Ethics Of Enron

Though the sentencing of ex-Enron president Jeff Skilling has occurred and founder Ken Daley has passed away the legacy of Enron’s lack of moral capacity has remained. Through countless crisis’s, dozens of misleading comments, and a plethora of information hidden from its stockholders, Enron quickly went from the company of the century to a disgrace of the corporate business world and the philosophy of capitalism. One specific action that ultimately led to the destruction and bankruptcy of the company were those of Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow. The executives of Enron employed Andrew Fastow for the sole purpose of hiding the debt that plagued Enron, while keeping stockholders satisfied and unaware of the true financial burden Enron was facing. Fastow …show more content…
Fastow, clearly being employed by Enron, had worked to keep the stock prices of the company high while also hiding this overbearing debt, essentially betting on the price of the stock to never fall. At the same time, he began to take money from these hidden transactions and had begun to make a profit of his own. Though many question regarding ethics are spotlighted in this instance, one in particular is Enron’s inability to correctly record its funds due to mark-to-market accounting and instead proceed to orchestrate the deceit that fooled its stockholders, employees and analysts, all for personal gain. Out of all the mistakes Enron made in its brief history, the biggest and eventually most consequential was its moral philosophy, one that followed