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Difficulty: HardSufficient Assumption

Ethicist: Any corporate governance mechanism that fails to hold executive officers individually accountable for systemic negligence inevitably undermines fiduciary transparency. Furthermore, an institution cannot maintain long-term investor trust unless it upholds fiduciary transparency. Because the recently implemented Auditing Reform Framework does not establish clear statutory liability for executive oversight committees, this framework will fail to maintain long-term investor trust.

The ethicist's conclusion follows logically if which one of the following is assumed?

  1. A
    Any corporate governance mechanism that fails to hold executive officers individually accountable for systemic negligence does not establish clear statutory liability for executive oversight committees.
  2. B
    Upholding fiduciary transparency is sufficient to ensure that an institution maintains long-term investor trust.
  3. A corporate governance mechanism fails to hold executive officers individually accountable for systemic negligence if it does not establish clear statutory liability for executive oversight committees.Answer
  4. D
    Executive oversight committees that are subjected to clear statutory liability invariably maintain long-term investor trust.
  5. E
    Every regulatory reform that establishes clear statutory liability for executive oversight committees completely eliminates systemic negligence.

Answer

A corporate governance mechanism fails to hold executive officers individually accountable for systemic negligence if it does not establish clear statutory liability for executive oversight committees.
The correct answer provides the exact missing premise required to make the argument deductively valid. Combining the premise that the framework lacks clear statutory liability with the conditional rule that lacking clear statutory liability implies failing to hold officers individually accountable triggers the entire logical sequence: Lacks Statutory Liability → Fails Accountability → Undermines Transparency → Fails to Maintain Trust.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze and diagram the stated conditional premises and conclusion.
Premise 1: Fails Individual Accountability → Undermines Fiduciary Transparency. Premise 2: Maintains Trust → Upholds Fiduciary Transparency (Contrapositive: Undermines Fiduciary Transparency → Fails to Maintain Trust). Fact: Auditing Reform Framework lacks clear statutory liability for executive oversight committees. Conclusion: Auditing Reform Framework will fail to maintain long-term investor trust.
Deconstructing the argument into formal logic reveals the exact chain: Fails Individual Accountability → Undermines Transparency → Fails to Maintain Trust.
2
Identify the inferential gap between the factual premise and the conditional chain.
The premises connect 'Fails Individual Accountability' to 'Fails to Maintain Trust', but the stimulus introduces a new concept in the premise: 'lacks clear statutory liability for executive oversight committees'.
A sufficient assumption must bridge the new term in the premise (lacking statutory liability) to the trigger of the conditional chain (failing individual accountability).
3
Evaluate the answer choices to identify the statement that deductively guarantees the conclusion.
The statement specifying that lacking clear statutory liability guarantees a failure of individual accountability creates the unbroken chain: Lacks Statutory Liability → Fails Individual Accountability → Undermines Transparency → Fails Trust.
This 100% closes the deductive gap, making the conclusion follow necessarily from the premises.

Key Concept

Sufficient Assumption in Multi-Step Conditional Reasoning
Estimated Time:2m 0s
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Topics

Sufficient Assumption

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