Jens Petersen

Vicky Thorland-Oster

CPR E 394

29 April 2016

Ethical Development Essay

1. What is the purpose of having/following a "Code of Ethics"?

   1. The purpose of having/following a “Code of Ethics” is to be able to determine if the actions that are being taken, are the appropriate actions and that they are not morally wrong. Without a code of ethics what you do can vastly impact the situation for the better or the worse depending on the person’s moral standings. The code of ethics makes sure that what a person is doing, is not necessarily going to be deemed “bad”.

2. When you are faced with an ethical situation, how do you, personally, go about making a decision?  What factors are involved in making your decision?  Be specific!

   1. When I go about making a decision, I try to weigh out all of the factors that could be influential or take part in the decision making process. One virtue that I always try to uphold is honesty. As they say, honesty is the best policy and I believe that whole heartedly. Honesty has many benefits. For instance, if I were to lie about my personal knowledge, I may be placed into a job that I have no clue how to do or be expected to something that I cannot complete. With honesty, being placed in this decision may still work out because then others will be able willing to help instead of become irritated when you cannot do the job you were assigned. 

   2. Another factor that goes into making a decision for me, is responsibility. Responsibility and honesty can go hand in hand when making a decision. If dishonesty is involved in making a decision, it can have larger consequences. Typically, a person is held accountable for their actions. When lying during the decision making process, a person might not be able to handle what they are being held accountable for. With this, things like trustworthiness, dependability, reliability, and recognizing a personal and moral obligation to act for the good of others can be compromised in the eyes of many others.

3. What case study was discussed in your small group?  How did the ethical considerations introduced by your group members differ from your own?  How were they alike?  Was your group able to come to a consensus on what the most "ethical" decision would be?

   1. The case study that was discussed was the Volkswagen situation that is going on right now. Many of the considerations in my group were very similar to my own thoughts actually. We considered why Volkswagen would consider making the decision to fake out the EPA while doing emissions testing. We all came to a conclusion it was a team effort to make this decision. The upper level executives were not aware of what was happening, which meant that there was a large group that was working on this and were not going to tell any of the upper level people. We did not come to a conclusion about how this problem can be solved. We did talk about some unethical solutions however. One unethical solution would be for Volkswagen to simply pay the fines and other legal expenses that come with the illegality of this. However, this does not fix the real problem at hand which is the many cars on the road which do not meet EPA regulations. Volkswagen is needing to be held responsible for the emissions of all their vehicles and simply paying fines is not an ethical solution.

   2. Volkswagen was in the beginning not honest about what they were doing. Like I said, I whole heartedly prefer honesty. Consequences like this is are what I would have considered if I was placed in this position of developing a solution which would bypass the EPA testing.

4. Reflect on the "Virtue of Ethics" as it relates to the case study your group discussed.  Choose three of the six virtues that you feel are most related to your case study and briefly write about them.  Why did you choose the three you did?  How are they relevant to the case study?  Why are the other virtues less relevant?  Is there another ethical virtue you feel could apply to your case study that is NOT included in the "Virtue of Ethics?"  Why or why not?

   1. The first and biggest one is honesty. I believe that honesty is the best policy and it showed in this. Honesty could have avoided this entire situation. We discussed how it may have come down to the deadline and the engineers were not going to be able to complete what they were assigned to the specification given. The dishonesty comes in where they made the bypass implementation and called it good to make it appear that the job was completed. Again, this could have all been avoided with simple honesty.

   2. Responsibility. This is very much related to this as it plays a big role in this situation. The upper level management was not aware that this was happening nor are they know who was responsible for what happened.  The person or group who was in charge of this needs to be held accountable. This is hard to do when they are not aware of who did it in the first place. There has to be a level of accountability that cannot be executed because of the lack of knowledge. Now, when Volkswagen figures out who did it, I foresee there are going to be actions taken in the individuals/groups involved. With this, their trustworthiness that they may have built up will most likely be compromised.

   3. With the previous two statements, they tie really well into integrity. With the previous two virtues compromised, with this the integrity of the individuals/groups will be also be compromised because of what is happening. How they will be viewed will be changed since they violated some moral principles and ethics and did not exercise good ethical judgement in their field of practice.

   4. Now, this does not mean the other virtues are not involved or important. The fidelity of the employees were vital to this all happening. Without faithful employees, this whole thing might not have happened. If they employees would have left because they saw that this was unethical, this situation may not have occurred

   5. Charity may have been involved to keep people quiet, but this would be classified under honest in my opinion. Telling someone to do something unethical and to not tell anyone about it is not the honest thing to do which is why I saw this.

   6. Self-discipline was probably involved in this situation, but we didn’t really talk much about it.