Case Study Handling Disparate InformationRead Case 7 Handling

Case Study: Handling Disparate Information
Read Case 7: Handling Disparate Information for Evaluating
Trainees located in Appendix A: Case Studies for Ethical
Decision Making, in your textbook. Thoroughly answer each of
the questions below regarding Case 7: Handling Disparate
Information for Evaluating Trainees in a total of 350-500
words. Use one to two scholarly resources to support your
answers. Use in-text citations when appropriate, according to
APA formatting.
1. Why is this an ethical dilemma? Which APA Ethical
Principles help frame the nature of the dilemma?
2. How are APA Ethical Standards 1.08, 3.04, 3.05, 3.09, 7.04,
7.05, and 7.06 and the Hot Topics “Ethical Supervision of
Trainees in Professional Psychology Programs” (Chapter 10)
and “Multicultural Ethical Competence” (Chapter 5) relevant to
this case? Which other standards might apply?
3. What are Dr. Vaji’s ethical alternatives for resolving this
dilemma? Which alternative best reflects the Ethics Code
aspirational principles and enforceable standards, legal
standards, and obligations to stakeholders? Can you identify the
ethical theory (discussed in Chapter 3) guiding your decision?
4. What steps should Dr. Vaji take to implement his decision
and monitor its effect?
While APA style is not required for the body of this assignment,
solid academic writing is expected, and documentation of
sources should be presented using APA formatting guidelines,
which can be found in the APA Style Guide, located in the
Student Success enter.
You are not required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite.
Case 7. Handling Disparate Information for Evaluating
TraineesRashid Vaji, PhD, a member of the school psychology
faculty at a midsize university, serves as a faculty supervisor
for students assigned to externships in schools. The department
has formalized a supervision and evaluation system for the

extern program. Students have weekly individual meetings with
the faculty supervisor and biweekly meetings with the on-site
supervisor. The on-site supervisor writes a midyear (December)
and end of academic year (May) evaluation of each student. The
site evaluations are sent to Dr. Vaji, and he provides feedback
based on the site and his own supervisory evaluation to each
student. The final grade (fail, low pass, pass, high pass) is the
responsibility of Dr. Vaji.Dr. Vaji also teaches the spring
semester graduate class Health Disparities in Mental Health.
One of the course requirements is for students to write weekly
thought papers, in which they take the perspective of therapy
clients from different ethnic groups in reaction to specific
session topics. Leo Watson, a second-year graduate student, is
one of Dr. Vaji’s externship supervisees. He is also enrolled in
the Health Disparities course. Leo’s thought papers often
present ethnic-minority adolescents as prone to violence and
unable to grasp the insights offered by school psychologists. In
a classroom role-playing exercise, Leo plays an ethnic-minority
student client as slumping in his chair, not understanding the
psychologist, and giving angry retorts. In written comments on
these thought papers and class feedback, Dr. Vaji encourages
Leo to incorporate more of the readings on racial/ethnic
discrimination and multicultural competence into his papers and
to provide more complex perspectives on clients.One day during
his office hours, three students from the class come to Dr.
Vaji’s office to complain about Leo’s behavior outside the
classroom. They describe incidents in which Leo uses
derogatory ethnic labels to describe his externship clients and
brags about “putting one over” on his site supervisors by
describing these clients in “glowing” terms just to satisfy his
supervisors’ “stupid do-good” attitudes. They also report an
incident at a local bar at which Leo was seen harassing an
African American waitress, including by using racial slurs.After
the students have left his office, Dr. Vaji reviews his midyear
evaluation and supervision notes on Leo and the midyear on-site
supervisor’s report. In his own evaluation report, Dr. Vaji had

written, “Leo often articulates a strong sense of duty to help his
ethnic minority students overcome past discrimination but needs
additional growth and supervision in applying a multicultural
perspective to his clinical work.” The on-site supervisor’s
evaluation states thatLeo has a wonderful attitude toward his
student clients. . . . Unfortunately, evaluation of his
multicultural treatment skills is limited because Leo has had
fewer cases to discuss than some of his peers, since a larger
than usual number of ethnic minority clients have stopped
coming to their sessions with him.It is the middle of the spring
semester, and Dr. Vaji still has approximately 6 weeks of
supervision left with Leo. The students’ complaints about Leo
are consistent with what Dr. Vaji has observed in Leo’s class
papers and role-playing exercises. However, these complaints
are very different from Leo’s presentation during on-site
supervision. If Leo has been intentionally deceiving both
supervisors, then he may be more ineffective or harmful as a
therapist to his current clients than either supervisor has
realized. In addition, purposeful attempts to deceive the
supervisors might indicate a personality disorder or lack of
integrity that, if left unaddressed, might be harmful to
adolescent clients in the future.
Ethical Dilemma
Dr. Vaji would like to meet with Leo to discuss, at a minimum,
ways to retain adolescent clients and to improve his
multicultural treatment skills. He does not know to what extent
his conversation with Leo and final supervisory report should be
influenced by the information provided by the other graduate
students.
© Strayer University. All Rights Reserved. This document
contains Strayer University Confidential and Proprietary
information and may not

be copied, further distributed, or otherwise disclosed in whole
or in part, without the expressed written permission of Strayer
University.
JWI 531 (1202) Page 1 of 9
JWI 531: Financial Management II
Week Five Lecture Notes
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JWI 531 (1202) Page 2 of 9
FORECASTING AND PLANNING
What It Means
Forecasting is the financial lens through which the business
plans of an organization are analyzed. While
forecasting is both an art and a science, there are proven tools
and practices financial analysts use to
build predictive models incorporating past trends, current risks,
and opportunities. Based on these
forecasts, budgeting tools are then applied to develop a plan
needed to fund strategic initiatives.

Why It Matters
• Every strategic initiative an organization considers will be
based on forecasts. The more accurate
the forecast is, the more successful the plan will be.
• Financial leaders are key members of the strategy team, and
will be relied upon to develop
accurate forecasts based on economic conditions and market
dynamics.
• The strategic planning process of building models for future
cash flows requires that you identify
all of the assumptions being made about an opportunity. This
comprehensive process enables
the team to be more thorough in their decision-making.
“Budgeting is about opportunity. The only
two measurements that count are how did I
do against the prior year and how did I do
against the competition: that’s what creates
shareholder value.”
Jack Welch

be copied, further distributed, or otherwise disclosed in whol e
University.
JWI 531 (1202) Page 3 of 9
THE CHALLENGE AND OPPORTUNITY FOR MANAGERS
It’s impossible to imagine any organization making important
strategic decisions without thorough
analysis. For plans that require a significant commitment of
capital, you can be certain that proven
forecasting techniques will be used to analyze opportunities and
risks, and to develop a budget for the
strategy.
Unfortunately, budgeting may be the most cringe-worthy word
in business vocabulary. But why is that?
And, more importantly, what can we do to change this?
Instead of being a positive process that encourages people to
think big and plan how to put the
organization’s strategy into action, too often, the budgeting
process becomes a time-consuming game.
But if you can end the “budget game” and focus on more useful

information, you can empower managers
with better tools to run their businesses.
If you want a seat at the table where strategic opportunities are
discussed and planning decisions are
made, you need to understand the principles upon which these
decisions rest. Forecasting is always a
part of this process. If you can’t contribute to this analysis or
understand the terms being used, your ability
to impact these decisions will be severely limited and your
business’s strategy may never get off the
ground.
The challenge with forecasting, of course, is that it’s basically a
prediction. Predictions take events,
trends, patterns, and behaviors that have happened in the past,
and extrapolate to develop probabilities
about what will happen in the future. If the forecasts turn out to
be correct, and if the business has a
viable plan to capitalize on them, it can make money.
Forecasting and planning require the identification
of a range of possible outcomes that could occur, narrowing that
range to the most likely best- and worst-
case scenarios, and developing a financial strategy that
maximizes upside potential and minimize s
downside impact within the forecasted range.
Still, it’s not unusual to have a group of seasoned and
successful business leaders working together to
develop a business plan, and to have each of them come to the
table with a very different set of
assumptions and forecasts. Understanding and leveraging the
tools of budgeting is critical to testing
various scenarios and developing a financially defensible
business strategy.

The materials we cover this week will help you strengthen these
skills and deepen your understanding of
these critical processes. Your great ideas deserve nothing less!
University.
JWI 531 (1202) Page 4 of 9
YOUR STARTING POINT
1. Are you as involved with strategic decisions in your
organization as you would like to be? If
not, why not? If so, do you feel comfortable with participating
in all aspects of this process?
2. What are the most difficult metrics to accurately forecast in
your business? Why is that?
Which ones are the easiest to accurately forecast? How can you

leverage additional data
sources or team members to help you improve the accuracy of
your forecasts?
3. Do you feel the budgeting process in your organization is as
effective as it could be? If not,
why not? Does the budgeting process at your organization feel
like a chore, or a strategic
planning process? How can you make it more like the latter?
4. When building forecasts of future cash flows, does your team
use flexible models that provide
a range of possible results to analyze?
5. How frequently do you compare actual results with planned
results? Do you think you do it
often enough? Why?
6. Do you have a great idea for a new strategic initiative? Draw
out an investment timeline and

forecast the cash flows you’d expect. Change a few assumptions
and recalculate the results in
order to get a sense of how changes in assumptions impact the
viability of the idea.
University.
JWI 531 (1202) Page 5 of 9
FORECASTING AND PLANNING
Looking into the Crystal Ball
Forecasting and planning are about modeling what the future
might look like if you follow a specific
strategic opportunity. While it’s impossible to know the future,
you will be better prepared to make
decisions and execute if you have put the work into planning.
This means:
1. Identifying all of the assumptions you have to make about the

future (e.g., costs, revenues,
market share, market size, competitive environment). You can
count on having these
assumptions challenged and that’s okay – you’ll be prepared if
you’ve done your homework.
2. Putting cash flows against those assumptions. Cash flows, not
revenues and expenses, are the
building blocks of forecasting. You must build models that
allow you to test the sensitivity of the
financial results to changes in your assumptions.
Modeling…Bad Behavior?
Bragg begins his chapter on budgeting and forecasting with an
acknowledgement of the challenges
financial leaders face in most planning processes.
“The corporate budget is one of the principal documents used by
a CFO to gain an
understanding of where a company is supposed to go, and how
to get there. However,
the budget has also fallen into some disrepute, since it can lead
to a variety of negative
outcomes, and can diverge so wildly from actual results that it
is essentially ignored.”
The CFO Guidebook, p. 131
To illustrate the pros and cons of forecasting and planning,

Bragg presents a summary outlining the
advantages of having a formal process, including orientation for
stakeholders, scenario modeling,
assumption reviews, predicting cash flows and costs, and even
investor communications. He then
outlines an even longer list of the downsides, including
inaccuracy, rigid decision making, and gaming the
system (pp. 131-134). He summarizes these challenges as
follows:
“The single most fundamental problem underlying the entire
concept of a budget is that it
is designed to control a company from the top. The basic
underpinning of the system is
that senior management forces managers throughout the
company to agree to a specific
outcome (that portion of the budget for which they are
responsible), which senior
management then monitors to control the activities of the
managers. This agreement is
usually a formal agreement under which each manager commits
to achieve a fixed target
in exchange for receiving a bonus.”

University.
JWI 531 (1202) Page 6 of 9
It is this last point, the risk of negative behaviors driven by
rigid bonus models, which underlies much of
Bragg’s critique of the self-reinforcing systems and bureaucracy
needed to control budgets.
Planning and Control
Budgeting is about two elements: planning and control.
Organizations set goals and identify the
resources necessary to meet those goals: time, people, materials,
and money (planning). They must then
monitor financial data as they unfold and manage adjustments in
operational activities (control) to ensure
that actual outcomes are as close as possible to what was
budgeted.
• When you hear the word budget, you should be thinking of it
as a plan to operationalize the
organization’s strategy, describing the results you expect in the
near term and the resources
you’ll need to achieve those results.
• A flexible budget is one that uses the same estimates for costs
as the original budget, but is set
at the same volume or activity level as the actual results.

• When actual results start to come in, differences between the
plan and these results can be
measured. These differences are what financial managers call
“variances.”
• In the language of budgeting, all of the work to keep the
actual results on track and achieve the
goals set out in the budget is called “control.”
During the period covered by the budget, variances provide
feedback on where to direct attention and
corrective action to get the business back on track. If market
conditions with customers and suppliers
change significantly after the budget is made, then variance
analysis can provide inputs to update the
budget. When the actual level of revenue is greater than planned
or some actual cost is lower than
planned, this variance is called “favorable.” When the opposite
occurs, the variance is referred to as
“unfavorable.”
Finding a Better Way
Before managers and business leaders can consider changes to
the financial planning process, they
must understand how the models are typically structured. Bragg
provides an excellent summary of the
“system of budgets” (pp. 138-144). Read it carefully to help you
better understand the organization and
dependencies of different budgets, as well as what levers can be

pulled to improve the process.
He also presents a consideration of alternatives to even having a
budget. While this may seem ridiculous
at first, it may not be as radical as it sounds. He introduces the
idea of a rolling forecast as follows:
“A good replacement for a budget is the rolling forecast. This is
a simple forecast that
contains information only at an aggregate level, such as:
University.
JWI 531 (1202) Page 7 of 9
• Revenues by product line
• Expenses aggregated into a few line items
• Customer order backlog
• Cash flow
The intent is to create a system that is easily updated, and
which gives the organization a
reasonable view of what the future looks like for at least the
next few months. A key reason

for having a rolling forecast is to bring up issues as soon as
possible, so that a company
can initiate corrective actions to deal with them. Thus, the goal
of a rolling forecast is not to
attain a specific target, but rather to provide early notice of
problems and opportunities.”
From this jumping off point, he addresses several connected
topics, including goal setting without a
budget, strategy without a budget, reduction of bureaucracy, and
even building compensation models
without a budget. These will definitely give you some ideas for
reconsidering the status quo.
In Summary
The future will never look exactly as you planned. One way to
deal with those inevitable changes is to
make sure that the models you’re using to make decisions are
flexible enough to adapt to changing or
unanticipated conditions.
It’s not that businesses shouldn’t make plans based on forecasts.
Of course they should. It’s about getting
every brain in the game and working with financial leaders to
develop processes that drive the behaviors
needed to win – not just to beat the budget. The forecasting and
planning process must be one in which
information is shared more broadly, in which a culture is
created that ends the gaming of the system, and
in which team members are united around common values and

metrics.
be copied, further distributed, or otherwise disclosed i n whole
University.
JWI 531 (1202) Page 8 of 9
SUCCEEDING BEYOND THE COURSE
As you read the materials and participate in class activities, stay
focused on the key learning outcomes
for the week and how they can be applied to your job.
• Explore the challenges of forecasting in developing a sound
financial plan
Take your “best big idea” and put it through your own
forecasting and budgeting process. The
best way to become familiar with the language and techniques
of planning is to practice. What
forecasts about cash flow will you have to consider to determine
if the idea makes financial
sense? Don’t worry initially about the accuracy of your
forecasts. Just start by identifyi ng what
forecasts you will need to consider to develop a well -researched

plan. Visit the finance
department and get their guidance on what criteria should be
used to analyze your ideas.
• Assess the reliability and application of key predictive
indicators
You have identified the forecasts you will have to consider in
building your financial plan. This
may have been quite simple or complex, depending on the scope
of your big idea and whether it
is an evolution of your company’s current core business or an
untested venture. Now, you must
assess the reliability of the predictive indicators that inform
your forecast. Generally speaking,
forecasts are most reliable when they are: (a) focused on near -
term events, and (b) where the
historical trends have been consistent and connectable to clear
drivers. It’s okay if you have to
make some assumptions – all business planning requires
assumptions. The key is to be clear on
what sources you are leveraging, what parameters represent
reasonable best- and worst-case
scenarios, and what risk events could undermine the forecast.
This is a great time to review your
course materials from Week 2.
• Evaluate options for goal setting and compensation relative to
forecasts

Whether you are a manager setting performance goals for your
team, or you are working with
your boss to set your own performance goals, it’s important to
have honest conversations about
how the business forecasts were arrived at, and what it will take
to get there. Jack is a strong
advocate for candor in this area. The forecasting techniques
we’ve looked at in this course are
popular across a variety of organizations, but every business is
different, and the reliability of a
forecast for a company that has decades of data behind it is
going to be different than those of a
startup or a new product offering. The bottom line is that you
want to set your team up to win.
Creating goals that are excessive or have little data to support
them can lead to disappointment.
The best principle is to set performance goals so that if the team
knocks it out of the park, the
people who generated the results get rewarded.
University.
JWI 531 (1202) Page 9 of 9
ACTION PLAN

To apply what I have learned this week in my course to my job,
I will…
Action Item(s)
Resources and Tools Needed (from this course and in my
workplace)
Timeline and Milestones

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