By positioning themselves in the same business area and mixing activities, the audit firm found itself in a compromising position. In addition to that, once the SEC began investigating Enron, Andersen realized that they had not been forthcoming and truthful with their audits of Enron's financial statements and decided to destroy as much evidence as they could so that when the gavel had fallen they would not be reprimanded as severely as they should. According to Thomas Enron later fired Andersen as auditor for "destruction of documents and lack of guidance on accounting policy." Just as Enron knew that the shortcuts they were taking were morally and professionally wrong, as a reader, it is hard to believe that the company was unaware that its own audit firm had destroyed the audit records of the company's financial statements. At the end of 2002 the Andersen company was destroyed due to the lack of business morality and all Enron employees were left without jobs, savings and benefits. The collapse of Enron allowed other companies in the same line of work to gain some of the customers lost during the scandal, however the scandal also made customers more aware of the business relationships they had entered into and caused them to pay close attention to the companies of accounting that