INTERNET INFAMY

Synopsis

The first “killer app” of the Internet was email. In fact, email is the Internet application that
was most responsible for the rapid, worldwide growth of the information superhighway. Email
quickly became the primary communication medium in the business world. By 2015, an estimated
200 billion emails were being sent on a daily basis and more than one-half of those messages
involved businesses. On a typical day, a business professional receives 88 emails and sends 34.
The seemingly indestructible and timeless nature of emails has posed problems for many
business professionals, including none other than Bill Gates. During the course of the historic
anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft, federal prosecutors retrieved emails sent by Gates years earlier
to demonstrate that, despite his contention to the contrary, he had been aware of abusive business
practices that Microsoft had used against its key competitors
This short case demonstrates the need for accountants new to the profession to be discreet and
considerate when they choose to communicate via email. Embedded in this case are four anecdotes
involving problematic email messages sent by novice accountants—each of the emails quickly
went “viral” on the Internet. A soon-to-graduate accounting major at a university in the Midwest
sent an awkward and tactless email to a Big Four female recruiter who he had met at a career fair.
The email not only killed his chances of landing a job with the given Big Four firm but also
reportedly resulted in his three pending job offers being rescinded.
Two of the vignettes in this case involve college-type pranks. Three entry-level employees of
a Big Four firm were suspended after they circulated an email to male colleagues in their practice
office that included photos of 13 newly-hired females. The email requested the recipients to rate
those new employees for the purpose of developing a top ten list of the most attractive female new
hires. The prank quickly got out of hand after recipients began making rude comments regarding
several of those new hires. Ironically, less than one year earlier, an entry-level female employee
of another Big Four firm had sent out a comparable email to her female colleagues. That email
asked the recipients to rate the men in their practice office on nine traits, one which was “most
likely to sleep his way to the top.”
Arguably the most notorious email gaffe within the ranks of the accounting profession was made
by a young lady who circulated an email that doubled as her resignation letter. In the email, the
young lady carpet bombed her former co-workers, partners in the practice office, and the
auditing discipline as a whole. Her email garnered so much attention that she received numerous
interview requests from the media—one of which she granted.