1.28.

Communication Ethics: Distinguishing Ethical Dilemmas and Ethical Lapses [LO-6]

Briefly explain why you think each of the following is or is not ethical.
a. Keeping quiet about a possible environmental hazard you’ve just discovered in your
company’s processing plant
b. Overselling the benefits of instant messaging to your company’s managers; they never seem to
understand the benefits of technology, so you believe it’s the only way to convince them to make
the right choice
c. Telling an associate and close friend that she needs to pay more attention to her work
responsibilities, or management will fire her
d. Recommending the purchase of equipment your department doesn’t really need in order to use
up your allocated funds before the end of the fiscal year so that your budget won’t be cut next
year, when you might have a real need for the money

In my opinion I think all the following above is not ethical. It is because:

a) In this situation you as a manager already know that your factory will harm the
environment but still keeping quiet about it. It is not ethical as trying to manipulate the
company to keep up the business without thinking the disadvantages to the environment.
b) Distort the facts. The fact can be manipulated in unethical ways, for example deceiving
audiences or changing the scale of graphs and charts to exaggerate or conceal differences.
c) This is a ethic because you are trying to advice your friends to commited with their work
so that they will not be fired by their manager
d) This is selective misquoting. It is not ethic when you distord or hide the truth that is relate
with the company