Effective Writing 10th Edition by Claire May,Gordon May

Exercise 5

You are a staff accountant at Outrageous Corporation. The controller of the company, Howard Eino, is concerned that profits reported in the annual report will not meet those forecast at the beginning of the year. He has asked you to decrease the amount of annual depreciation charged on certain equipment by revising the estimated life. When you tell Mr. Eino that revision of useful life solely to "manage" profit is not appropriate, he responds by saying, "Oh, everybody does it." You realize that if you fail to do what your boss wants, you may receive an unfavorable annual performance evaluation. How will you resolve this dilemma?
To help yourself think through this problem, you've decided to write an outline in which you'll record the issues, relevant information, your reasoning, and the course of action you finally decide to take. You won't show the outline to anyone else, but you want it to be complete and well organized, so that your thinking will be clear. Write the outline.