Sherron Watkins's Case Summary

This paper provides prescriptive ethical judgement as to the actions made by Sherron Watkins, a CPA and “former VP of Enron(6)”, which caused the corporation to collapse. In summary, Watkins during her term of office became aware of “accounting irregularities” within the company’s accounting records. These irregularities were of such significant materiality, that if left alone, would result in immense public deception, fraud, and potential regulatory consequences.
Seeming to have developed a solid foundation of moral values within her “home town of Tomball, Texas; a community of old-fashion decency(2)”, Watkins refused to leave her private moral values at home. She exhibited altruism at her workplace and began challenging executives by using a form of internal whistleblowing within the walls of Enron. Internal whistleblowing involves “reporting concerns outside normal channels of authority, but without going public(4)”. Her technique involved providing written memo’s to executives, including current CEO, Ken Lay. Watkin “proposed action steps to getting the company back on the morally righteous path(3)”. Lay however did not take this “opportunity to salvage the company(2)” and ignored the claims made by Watkin. Lay exhibited moral recklessness by succeeding the …show more content…
According to an article on (Ethicsscoreboard.com), the author believes that Watkins actions weren’t heroic nor followed appropriate whistleblower conduct. The article states that Watkins “did the bare minimum of an employee by telling executives that something was wrong, but didn’t report to authorities when executives didn’t act(5)”. In essence, she willingly allowed management to continue conducting fraud until the “whole situation blew up(5)”. To the critic’s perspective, Watkin didn’t do the right thing because she failed to report the scandal immediately when she was aware of it. Waiting hurt stakeholders more if