Reference no: EM133751143

Homework: Ethical Dilemma in Coding Analysis

Scenario

You are employed as a project manager with a company frequently subcontracted to produce code for various U.S. government entities and affiliates. Traditionally, code that is developed for one federal department could be reused for another if approval is obtained by the former.

One day, your company is contacted by a privately-owned commercial corporation, FlyHigh, to create code for an avionics-related image processing effort. Since the code requested was almost identical to one used for a past project, a member of your team decided to, once approval had been obtained from the government, reuse the code.

After permission was granted through email, however, another team member brings to your attention that they realized the approving party, a law agency that was contracted by the government, lacked a complete understanding of who would benefit from the reused code.

You want to contact the government directly to ensure it had been informed of all vital aspects of the contract, but realize doing so could result in the initial approval being revoked. Your team with then have to re-code the work in progress for FlyHigh, increasing the contract bid up to two million dollars.

Understanding the contract between your company and FlyHigh is on the line, should you move forward with clarifying the situation to the appropriate party?

Task

To complete your analysis of the scenario provided, follow the steps outlined below.

I. Identify the facts of the situation.

What facts do you need to know in order to decide how to act in this situation?

II. Determine the ethical issue.

Is there some actual or potential harm involved for an individual group? Does it involve considerations of justice or right?

III. Determine the available alternatives.

Given the facts, what are your options?

IV. Who will be affected and to what degree?

How much weight does each stakeholder's claim deserve? Make sure you consider the future behavior of your team here as well.

V. What are the ethics of the alternatives?

Apply three of the six ethical theories to each of the options you've identified. How will you decide if the theories point to different alternatives?

VI. Determine the practical constraints.

Are there any obstacles to choosing the course of action you are proposing? What are the future implications for the members of your team? What priorities are you modeling?

VII. Implement and justify your course of action.

What steps are necessary? How will you communicate your course of action to the rest of your team? Incorporate both your personal ethics statement and lessons learned from your ethical role model, when appropriate.