A colleague was invited to celebrate a friend’s birthday abroad. Although the friend is also a client (albeit worth only £2,000 a year in fee income), my colleague was invited as an old friend, not as a business associate. My colleague later claimed all her weekend’s expenses on the company, on the ground that she spoke business with some of the other guests. Is that OK?
Even in the extravagant, “who’s counting?” arena of corporate expense accounts – without which many grouse moors, some opera houses and quite a few swanky restaurants would shrivel like a well-salted slug – your colleague’s behaviour seems a little ambitious, doesn’t it?
At a certain level in corporate life, it becomes tricky to draw a neat line between business and pleasure. When the border dividing business contact from friend blurs, how do you say for certain what is claimable as a company expense and what isn’t? Say you legitimately entertain a business associate and spouse, the pair of whom have gradually also become your friends, in your company’s box at Covent Garden, followed by dinner in a favourite restaurant – never once discussing business, but merely further cementing your personal relationship. How different is that from you and your spouses meeting up for dinner during your respective summer holidays in Provence and claiming that meal on expenses? To a company accountant, or even to a government tax inspector, perhaps not so much. But to an ethicist, surely quite a lot.
Just as we can sense when we are overstaying our welcome with friends, we have an acute – even if hard to calibrate – awareness of when we have overstepped the mark in abusing an expense account. Just because your friend may have a convincing alibi doesn’t mean that she is innocent.
What’s your view and do you have a dilemma of your own?
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