Ernst & Young Global Limited is a multinational professional services partnership founded in 1989 and regarded as

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Ernst & Young Global Limited is a multinational professional services partnership founded in 1989 and regarded as one of the Big Four accounting firms (Wikipedia 2023). It provides assurance services such as financial auditing, consulting, tax, strategy and transactions (EY 2023). Carmine Di Sibio is currently the Global Chairman and the CEO of EY from 2019 till present (Business Roundtable n.d.,). The quality services provided are intended to help clients and society create long-term value to establish a better working world. They also help build trust and confidence in the capital markets (EY 2023).Therefore, EY is an accounting firm that is responsible for evaluating the integrity of a company's financial statements and alerting investors if they discover questionable accounting practices (Goldstein 2022).

However, Ernst & Young LLP (EY) knew that from 2017-2021, 49 EY audit professionals had cheated on their ethics component of Certified Public Accountant (CPA) exam and on continuing professional education (CPE) coursesby using answer keys and sharing them amongst their colleagues in order to obtain and maintain their CPA licenses (Rushe 2022). This included those intended to ensure that accountants can evaluate whether the clients' financial statements are in accordancewith the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (US Securities and Exchange Commission 2022). In addition, many EY's professionals who did not cheat on the CPA exams knew that their colleagues were engaging in unethical behaviour but did nothing to report it.

On June 19, 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued avoluntary request to EYto seek information related to ethics or whistle blower complaints regarding employees cheating on training exams and CPE courses (Peirce 2022). EY had to send a submission to the Division within 24 hours when on the same day, the firm had received a whistle blower tip regarding potential cheating on a CPA ethics exam (Nicodemus 2022). Hence, the CEO must decide whether to report to the SEC about the whistle blower complaint andthe audit professionals cheating on CPA ethics exam or not to report the SEC about the misconduct.

What is the ethical issues of the case?

Who is the decision maker in this case and what are competing demands or pressure the decision maker have to face from different stakeholders.

What is the ethical dilemma of this case by categorizing the Alternative A and B?

Based on utilitarianism, what are the short term and long term consequences for alternative A and B that the decision maker have to face from each stakeholders? The consequences should be punishments for the decision maker.

Based on utilitarianism, which alternative should be chosen and why?