Kevin Ryan is an accountant for Warick Corporation, a medium-size manufacturing firm. One of his responsibilities is to review the adjusting entries at the end of each accounting period. Mary Sellers is a new accountant at Warick Corporation. She is a recent graduate and this is her first accounting job. One of the duties Kevin assigned Mary was to prepare the adjusting entries. After reviewing Mary’s work, Kevin came to the conclusion that Mary did not understand the adjusting process for a manufacturing company. During their review meeting, Kevin told Mary that he was concerned about her ability to do the job. Mary admitted not having a sound knowledge of the adjusting and closing process but asked Kevin to give her another month to catch on. Kevin said he would have to think about it over the weekend and he would get back to her on Monday. That weekend, Kevin was offered a much better paying job with a large manufacturing company in the same city. He immediately accepted the position. When he gave his boss notice that he would be leaving Warick, his boss asked him how Mary was doing. Kevin said he thought she’d do just fine.

1. Do you think Kevin should have told his boss about Mary’s poor performance?

Why or why not?

2. How will Kevin’s decision to not say anything affect Mary?

3. Write a short incident report concerning Mary’s poor job performance and subsequent conference with Kevin. Assume Kevin writes the report and it will be placed in Mary’s personnel file.

4. In groups of two or three, discuss what alternatives Kevin had in this situation.

Come to a group consensus on the best alternative.