Ethical Scenarios

Ethical Scenarios for Class Discussion
Paul Cousins – North Carolina State University Office of Student Conduct

1) You are the treasurer of your professional society, and your best friend comes to you with a request to borrow some organizational money.It is Saturday and the club just had its most successful fundraiser in years the night before. The proceeds from the event totaled $3500. Your friend indicates that his girlfriend, who goes to school in New England, just broke a leg in an intramural sporting event and he wants to fly up to see her as soon as possible. The problem is that his financial aid has not been disbursed yet, and his parents do not have the funds to support this. He says he wants to go this afternoon and be back tomorrow night, Sunday night. He also indicates that he will bring back the money to pay for the ticket from his girlfriend. He is in a panic and needs your answer right away. Currently the cost of the airline ticket, round trip, is $398. You have the event money in your residence hall room and are expected to deposit it on Monday at the local bank.

Follow-up elements…what if the cost of the ticket was $698?…what if she had been in a car accident and was in the intensive care unit and he had been contacted by her roommate?…does it really matter if he did go and returned the money in time for the bank deposit?…what if the injured person was your girlfriend?

2) You are a student in a difficult course, and the first test did not go well for you, so you feel some pressure to do well on the remaining homework sets. You are surfing the web one night looking for help with the problem set for the course, and you type in the name of the textbook and “solution”. Google responds with multiple hits on publicly accessible websites. Some of these sites have unauthorized copies of the solution key for the chapter where your homework problems appear. Other sites are either individuals or universities that have posted the solutions to one particular problem that appears in the homework set that is due. Your instructor has indicated in the syllabus that you may not share work with other people or use other person’s work to help yourself. You heard someone in the CHE lounge discussing the easy availability of the solutions on-line, so you are pretty sure that other students are using these types of unauthorized solutions for homework help. What do you do?

Follow-up elements…what if the site simply charged you money to access the materials?…what if the web site advertised that you could pay a certain amount to have someone send you the solution to that particular problem?….what if to access course materials on a site, you had to upload materials from your course (e.g. homework solutions or exams?),,, would you tell other students about this site?

3) You go to the grocery store on the weekend to do some shopping for the coming week. It turns out to be a busy time in the store. You gather up your groceries and head to the checkout area where you get in line. The cashier for your line looks to be about 16…probably in high school working an after school and weekend job. When you get to the head of the line you put your items on the belt and get out your money to pay. The bill comes to just over $7, and you pay in cash. The cashier returns your change, and you head to your car. When you reach your car, you take your keys out of your pocket and pull out the change as well. You find that you have an extra $10 in your hand and realize that the cashier has given you change believing you gave him a $20 bill instead of the $10 bill that you actually gave him. What are you going to do with the money?

follow up elements…what if it’s raining and you had to park a long way across the lot?…what if you got home (15 minutes away) before noticing the extra $10?…have you ever worked in a service type job?…what are the impacts of your decision?

4) You have nearly finished your degree and are job seeking. You apply to and interview for three separate companies. All three are good companies but your preference differs significantly based on the jobs that they have open.

Your first choice job is the absolute perfect job.You could see yourself making an entire career with this company with all the opportunities, and the money is more than you could have hoped for.
Your second choice is a great company, they have a wonderful position, but the outfit is a bit smaller and therefore has fewer opportunities for advancement.You could see yourself there for 3-5 years, with good money, and then taking that experience and moving to the next level.
Your third choice would do for now, it has a reasonable salary (compared to your classmates), and it is local so you would not need to relocate.But this company is working only in a small area of your field and you are not likely to get the growth and challenge that is offered by the other choices. You would take this job if you did not have a better choice, but would probably start looking for a new position after a year.

Your first choice job calls you and tells you that you are their second choice and that they hope you will maintain your interest because they can see you working with them in the future. Your second choice job calls and offers you their job on the spot. You are exactly the person they are looking for, and they are committed to challenging you and supporting you in your growth in your field. You tell them that you would be thrilled to take the position, you talk about possible starting dates, and even manage to negotiate a great starting salary. You don’t even pick up the phone when you get the call from your third choice company. A few days pass, and you get a call from your first choice job indicating that the person they offered the position to has had some health complications and won’t be able to take the position. They offer you the position, with the salary you want, and an appropriate starting date. What do you do?

follow up elements…what if the second job choice had sent a document that you had then signed instead of the phone call?…what are the implications of your choice for both companies?…what if you turned down job #2 to accept job #1, and two months later job #1 tells you that their first candidate is now healthy and available to take the job, so your offer has been rescinded?

5) You are working in your first job and all is going great. You begin to notice that a colleague of yours, hired at the same time, spends a large amount of time surfing the internet on non-work related sites. She spends time on the phone talking to family and friends (you know this because her cubicle is next to yours, and it’s clear that the conversations are not work related. You don’t know if the phone calls are local or long distance). You also notice that she makes a lot of color copies of materials that don’t appear to be work related. What do you do?

follow up elements…what if the person were one of your staff and you were the supervisor?…what if the person were your supervisor?…what impact does this type of behavior have on the company?