Question

1. Provide a brief description of the ethical dilemma, including your opinion on the ethical dilemma.
2. Select an ethical theory (Golden Rule, virtue, utilitarianism, or universalism) that supports your personal belief.

Answer 1

An ethical dilemma is described as a situation where a person is needed to make a decision between two possible moral imperatives and choosing any of them would have consequences for ignoring another. It is because when an individual has to decide between two posed options, he can only choose one.

In my opinion, when an individual is in a fix of an ethical dilemma, he should choose the best alternative among both. It can be understood with an example, a person comes across material errors in the financial statements of the company. He approaches senior and senior asks him to overlook the errors. In this case, the person is in an ethical dilemma whether he should report those errors or obey his senior.  According to me, he should report those errors because that is what he was hired for Also, he has moral and ethical obligations toward the people relying on those financial statements.

The theory I believe in is Utilitarianism. It is a theory of moral values. It advocates that we must choose an option that fosters pleasure or happiness and oppose the one that causes harm or unhappiness. When making a decision, an individual must make sure the decision is ethically right and has good for others. For instance, in the above example, reporting the material errors would be opposing harm or unhappiness.