Your medium-size company is preparing an engineering proposal to a federal agency, and you have been placed on loan by your boss to assist in editing the proposal. The proposal effort is managed by Vance, the assistant vice president (AVP) of marketing.

Vance gives you a draft section of the proposal to edit. This section, called Key Personnel for Proposed Project, describes the qualifications and planned project role of several company employees. Vance has marked up several of the resumes.

In reviewing the marked-up bio sketches, you are troubled by the following apparent inaccuracies:

• Kathy is proposed as the lead engineer. But she is committed full-time to an 18-month project for a New Jersey state agency. That project started only 4 months ago. It therefore appears that Kathy would be unavailable for the proposed new project, unless the company breaks its commitment to the NJ agencys project.

• The resumes of Jim and Bob, two associate software engineers, have been marked up in ways that exaggerate their level of experience. Both are junior engineers who have just begun to assume some design responsibilities, but the mark-ups make them sound like experienced designers. You dont know if Bob and Jim are aware of Vances mark-ups. Jim is your personal friend; his resume is accurate, except for the mark-ups. Bob is the nephew of the company President; you suspect his resume was somewhat inflated even before Vinces mark-ups.

When you state your concerns to Vance, he breezily dismisses them.

• Regarding the need to break the companys prior commitment of Kathy to the NJ project, he says: Thats just common industry practice. Government contractors routinely juggle employees to get new contracts.

• Regarding Bob and Jim, he says: Bio sketches are so commonly inflated that reviewers tend to discount them. We therefore need to puff them up a bit to stay competitive. Besides, by the time the contract is awarded, theyll be a little more experienced, and we could also have them take some online training.

You are the person being told to polish up the proposal, however, and youd like to make it more truthful preferably without getting fired in the process.

Question to answer:

1. Can you envision unstated facts that might alter your ethical assessments?

2. What options do you have for constructive action? Who might reasonably help?

3. Could skillful editing solve any parts of the problem?

(Even brief answers and/ or direction to go into for each question would be much appreciated!!))<33