Dealing With Ethical Dilemmas

There are a lot of situations that can be touchy when it comes to deciding whether or not something is ethical or not. Many of these situations occur in the workplace, in school, or even if it’s just a night out on the town. After reading all of the examples that were given, I chose to expand on the journalism/advertising example. This was the example where a newspaper advertised that there are no real health advantages between tap water and bottled water, and so the bottled water company that was one of their big clients threatened to take their business away from the newspaper if a new story was not released stating otherwise. There are two different ways a person can deal with a situation like this. The first way is the more unethical path to take. This would be the action of agreeing with the bottled water company to write a new article explaining that bottled water really is healthier than tap water. By taking this approach to the situation, the newspaper would be lying to all of its readers and the public even after their discoveries had already been printed and released. Other than for ethical reasons, this could end up being bad for your company in the long run for two reasons. The first reason is that if your customers are spending all their money to drink ‘healthier’ water, it could mean that they will have to cut costs in other areas of their budget. Especially in a touch economical time, this could mean that they will have to cut the cost of the newspaper, resulting in a loss of money for your company. Another outlook on this situation is if you did lie and rerun a story about how bottled water is better, word could get out and customers could potentially hear that you were lying just to make more money. More than likely, your company would be lose a lot of customers due to this because no one will believe what you are writing any more. The second approach to this situation is the most ethical response possible. This approach would be to say no to the water bottle company that wants you to write another article stating that bottled water is indeed better than plain tap water. By doing this, you may be losing a gigantic client along with a lot of money, but at least you will not be lying to your customers. This is the approach