Ethical Situations
Instructions:
Presented below are five ethical situations. Rank the situations from
most unethical to least unethical, with number 1 being the most unethical and 5 being
the least unethical. Also, think about what you would do in each situation.
Ethical Situation 1
You are taking a test. You notice that another test taker has a piece of paper hiding
under the desk. The person is taking the paper out to look at it every few minutes. You
believe the person is cheating. Rank: _____
Ethical Situation 2
You are a salesman selling diet pills. You learn that the pills cause cancer. The women
you sell to do not know, but really want to lose weight. You make a lot of money selling
these pills. Rank: _____
Ethical Situation 3
You are working in a restaurant and you see another worker drop a box full of bread.
The bread falls to the ground. The worker quickly picks up the bread and puts it back in
the box. Rank: _____
Ethical Situation 4
You work for a small company that has an office with 50 computers. In order to cut
software upgrade costs your boss has bought one copy of a copyrighted program and
has installed it on every computer in the company. Rank: _____
Ethical Situation 5
You work as a sales representative for a company selling brand name bags. You learn
that the bags are counterfeit. Your boss tells you that the customers do not know the
difference anyway. You get 50 percent of the profit from the bags. Rank: _____
*Situations from http://colton.byuh.edu/joseph/english/ethics.html