In each of the following situations, what would have been the ethical thing for the employee or supervisor to do? What criteria did you use to decide? What would you have done in that situation? Why?

a. Upon being hired, a new employee offers his supervisor confidential information about his former employer’s marketing plan for a new product. The two companies have competing product lines.

b. The associate editor of a magazine learns that a particularly newsworthy individual wants to be paid to grant an interview with the magazine. The magazine’s policy is never to pay for interviews, but the editor knows she could “bury” the expense elsewhere in her budget. She desperately wants the story; she knows it will be good for both the magazine and her career.