Ethical Transgression
Wells Fargo is a multinational financial services company. The company is in the Banking, Financial, and Insurance industries. The company’s size is defined by its revenue which is US$86.40 billion, an operating income of US$30.28 billion, a net income of US$22.39 billion, total assets of US$1.895 trillion and total equity of US$197.06 billion.
An ethical transgression is a violation of conduct, law, duty or a principle. Forbes recently wrote an article on an ethical transgression that happened in Wells Fargo, which was unethical sales practices. The company was ordered to part with $185 million as fine due to the creation of 2 million fake accounts by their employees. The ethical transgression was caused by dishonest employees; who were fired. The dishonest employees explained that they had the pressure of meeting the company’s goals, hence the transgression. This led to the company’s loss of its reputation ethically. According to the stakeholders’ perspective, Wells Fargo lacked trustworthy employees and had failed leadership which contributed to the transgression.
Wells Fargo is one of the largest corporations in America and ranked number 26 on the 2018 Fortune 500 rankings. Hence, the company was among the largest banks making it a leader. Leaders need to lead by example. Being an ethical leader, you need to be of ethical behavior. This means the leader needs to do what is right no matter how difficult it is. Hence, other companies in the Financial industry would look up to Wells Fargo ethically. Wells Fargo needs to have an agreement between its employees and the leaders on the goals and values to be met, in order to not have a replica of the same.