Assistant Account Undergrad Student. No References Needed

¶ … assistant account undergrad student. No references needed essay. Make simple easy writing. If I essay end today awesome 9:30am-10am 08/15/2012.

A moral problem I have faced:

When to intervene and stop a friend's bad spending habits

I work as an assistant accountant. The firm where I work places a great deal of trust in my ability to handle work competently. I have, within the folders and files I review on a daily basis, the lives of its clients in my hands in a very literal fashion. I am accustomed to shouldering responsibilities related to finances and I believe that someone's financial life should be treated with great discretion, when they ask for aid.

However, my job means that people occasionally come to me and ask me for financially-related advice. This means I know more about the finances of my friends than the average person. One of my friends came to me for very specific advice regarding his credit card balance. He was curious whether it would benefit him to transfer the balance of one credit card to a new one, to obtain a better rate. Although the advice I gave him was solely in regards to this matter, I was surprised as a general rule how much money he owned on his cards.

Even though I did not give him professional advice, I kept his conversation confidential. Yet whenever I saw him spending money, I found myself cringing inside in a manner I had not before. I began to subtly try to encourage him to spend less, and to try to find different things for the two of us to do together that did not require spending money. However, he persisted in regularly spending more money than he was earning.

The question of when we 'owe' our friends an intervention remains a challenging one. To what extent are we our brother's keepers? Moral philosophy provides some guidance, but not always a clear path. The concept of utilitarianism, for example, is not one I find particularly helpful. Its calculus that the 'end justifies the means' for the greatest number of people might suggest that even if I hurt his feelings, I should be honest with my friend about my concern regarding his spending habits. But approaching him in such a direct fashion might merely make him defensive. Deontological ethics might suggest that excessive spending and debt are morally wrong, if the debtor is unlikely to be able to pay back what he or she owes. But once again, although a moral lecture in the real world of friendship might be shaming to the person who is the object of scorn, lecturing does not always bring about a change in behavior. In the case of any addiction (and based upon my experiences in the field of financial services, I have come to regard over-spending as an addiction), too much moralizing can simply make the person become more self-destructive.

Instead, I decided to adopt the approach of virtue or character-based ethics and tried to set a good example for my friend. I talked about my own financial worries and stressed the fact that I was trying to be frugal with my own money. When we were talking about places to go out, I brought up the fact that I was trying to be conservative and not overspend, rather than focused on trying to change his behaviors. By showing him that it was possible to have fun without putting more money on his credit cards and generating more debt-related anxiety, I was able to more successfully have a positive influence over him.