Sheriff Consulting

Professional Ethics Project Office Space uses the 1999 cult comedy film Office Space as a real-world ethics case study for CPAs. Through the film's fictional embezzlement scheme — and the documented real-world copycat crime it inspired over 20 years later — participants explore how workplace dissatisfaction, weak internal controls, and the three elements of the fraud triangle (rationalization, opportunity, and incentive) combine to create occupational fraud risk. The course also examines how positive organizational culture and employee engagement serve as powerful fraud deterrents alongside traditional controls, giving CPAs practical ethical insights they can apply in their own organizations.

Upon completing the course, the participant will be able to:

1.    Identify how workplace dissatisfaction and disengagement increase the risk of occupational fraud

2.    Apply the fraud triangle — rationalization, opportunity, and incentive — to analyze how the fraud scheme in Office Space developed and what controls were missing

3.    Recognize how a real-world engineer copied the Office Space fraud scheme, and explain how organizational culture and internal controls work together to deter fraud