A financial manager's goal of maximizing current or short-term earnings may not be appropriate because:. A. it fails to consider the timing of the benefits.
B. increased earnings may be accompanied by unacceptably higher levels of risk.
C. earnings are subjective; they can be defined in various ways such as accounting or economic earnings.
D. all of the other answers are correct

The correct answer is the option D: All of the other answers are correct.

Explanation:

To begin with, the fact that it is not reasonable to think in short periods of time when it comes to business management is because basically the short term earnings can be very subjective principally depending on how the company define it, being the accounting and the economic ways of doing it very different and impacting differently as well on the company's way of thinking. Moreover, a company's primary focus must always be on the long run due to the timing that the benefits really impact in the company's accounts and therefore in the pocket of the shareholders or owners.