Michael C. Knapp
Cases in Auditing , 2003

Ethics case enron corporation John and Mary Andersen immigrated to the United States from their native Nor-way in 1881. The young couple made their way to the small farming community of Piano, Illinois, some 40 miles southwest of downtown Chicago. Over the pre-vious few decades, hundreds of Norwegian families had settled in Piano and sur-rounding communities. In fact, the aptly named Norway, Illinois, was located just a few miles away from the couple's new hometown. In 1885, Arthur Edward An-dersen was born. From an early age, the Andersens' son had a fascination with numbers. Little did his parents realize that Arthur's interest in numbers would become the driving force in his life. Less than one century after he was born, an accounting firm bearing Arthur Andersen's name would become the world's largest professional services organization with more than 1,000 partners and op-erations in dozens of countries scattered across the globe. think straight, talk straight
Discipline, honesty, and a strong work ethic were three key traits that John and Mary Andersen instilled in their son. The Andersens also constantly impressed upon him the importance of obtaining an education. Unfortunately, Arthur's par-ents did not survive to help him achieve that goal. Orphaned by the time he was a young teenager, Andersen was forced to take a full-time job as a mail clerk and attend night classes to work his way through high school. After graduating from high school, Andersen attended the University of Illinois while working as an ac-countant for Allis-Chalmers, a Chicago-based company that manufactured trac-tors and other farming equipment. In 1908, Andersen accepted a position with the Chicago office of Price Waterhouse. At the time, Price Waterhouse, which was organized in Great Britain during the early nineteenth