Question

Question 4: Relate a situation where you had to make an ethical decision, at work or at home, and spell out how you decided what the ethical solution was. This will be a completely confidential paper and no one except the Professor will see it. Be honest and explain your decision fully and completely.

Answer 1

An ethical decision is one where one chooses how to respond to a given situation based on values of “good/right” and “bad/wrong”, as opposed to mere expediency or efficiency.

Ethics are guiding principles of right and wrong that supersede the law and are left up to the person to choose. Here is a personal example. I bought a piece of property that was wrongly surveyed and deeded as being bigger than it was. Turns out there is a right of way that reduces my acreage and limits the intended use. I paid for property I don't own, and the surveyor has compensated that loss. Also, my long term, uncontested use of the property gives me legal right to continue some limited use of someone else's property, which in turn limits the rightful owners full use of it. What is legal is not ethical to me. I fully released the property.

The ethical thing to do is not found by asking what the other party wants but found by asking "what would I think is the right and fair thing to do if I were in the other person's shoes." Ethical behavior is acting out that answer.

During my internship when I was doing my initial research for my project, I discovered an unusual practice by one department in destroying accounting information. I knew this was not an acceptable business practice, so I met with my manager to discuss how to handle it. My manager asked me to fully document my findings and forward the information to her, which I did. She then took it forward to her manager and it was handled at that level. It was difficult for me to be involved, since I was just an intern, but I knew I had responsibility and accountability for my work and my findings

We had a difficult situation in my last job where some information came to light about improper hiring evaluation practices on the part of one of my coworkers. That person asked me not to say anything about it, yet it was a clear violation of our hiring practices, so I reported it to my manager, who then reported it to HR. It was handled per our company policy from that point forward