Ethical Dilemma Case Study: James and the Confidential Interview Data

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Case study 3
The given case study is all about the ethical dilemma which is faced by James when the Vice
President of the organization has asked him about the result of interview and asked that which
of them has performed the best. The main issue in this is that it was decided to keep all the
collected data as private, but Vice president of the organization has asked him about it. The
legal issue faced by James here is related to Fair work Act 2009, also issues of professionalism
along with issue of honesty.
ACS code of ethics
In this section, some code of ethics has been detailed which James can use so that he can
complete his job roles in ethical manner. Beneath are some ACS codes of ethics that he may be
able to use –
1. Honesty – The code of ethics, which James can use in this, is honesty. This will helps
him in completing his work in an ethical manner and will help him in fulfilling the job role
of him without any type of pressure of their senior like Vice President.
2. Competence – This ethical code will also help James in completing his work which is
assigned to him in an ethical manner (Australian computer society, 2019). This will help
him in completing his work; so that stakeholders (employees) related to this will get
some benefits.
3. Professionalism – This is the most important ethics which will help James in completing
their work with full of professionalism. This will encourage him to keep all data private
which has been collected by him so that development session of employees can take
place in effective manner.
Clause of ACS code of ethics
This section will detail different clauses which James can use so that they can complete his
work in ethical manner. Along with this, it will help him in performing their job roles and
responsibilities in manner, so that no one can get harmed due to this.
As per 1.2.3.c (of honesty), James has to reject the question which has been asked by Mr Vice
president of the organization. Along with this, they have to refuse to give answer and have to
say that he is not able to give because of ethics related to their job. Also, this will help James in
keeping himself honest towards the job role of them, so that they can keep the data private
which has been collected by him.
As per 1.2.4.b (of competence), James do not have mispresent his skills and knowledge to Mr
Vice president of organization (Australian computer society, 2019). Also, this will help him in
clearing to Mr Vice president that he is not going to give any detail about the results of interview,
because it is a confidential data of their employees.
As per 1.2.4.c (of competence), This will help James in getting knowledge about some of the
legislation which can help him in saying no to the Mr Vice president of the organization. Along
with this, here they can use some standards and acts of the organization which can help him in
keeping detail and data which has been collected from interview as private.

As per 1.2.6.b (of professionalism), this will help James in getting an idea about the rules
relates to their professionalism, which can help them in taking action against the person, who so
ever force him to not to fulfil the job roles of them. Along with this, it will help in completing his
duty of keeping data private and also in providing training development to their employees
according to its results.
As per 1.2.6.e (of dependency), this clause will help James in stopping the Mr Vice president of
the organization by crossing their limits by asking about the results of interview data which has
been collected by James. This also will help James in completing their work in most ethical
manner, so that the collected data of employees can get private, protected and safe.
Australian legislation
FWA (2009) – This is a law of Australian government, which said as fair work act. Under this
act, it has been cleared that if any employees in the nation founded as the guilty of breaching
with their job roles and responsibilities. James here can get fixed in such type of legal
challenges, in conditions of providing detail about the confidential information collected in
interview.
Analysis, discussion and recommendations
Using Thomas White methodology in solving James’ ethical dilemma:
Analyze the Consequence
James is liable to analyze both the discloser of information to superior and keeping the silence
supporting employee secrecy. For the first, he may face various violation consequences in
addition to losing trust and ethics. For latter, although he is against one superior, he has
chances of negotiation.
Analyze the action
For action taking phase, James must understand the ACS codes of ethics. It is recommended
as per consequence analysis, that James should not disclose the data and keep his ethics.
Decision
As the final stage of framework, James must make a final decision to be executed (White, n.d.).
References
 Australian computer society. (2019). ACS code of ethics. [online] Available at:
https://www.acs.org.au/content/dam/acs/acs-documents/Code-of-Ethics.pdf [Accessed
22 Aug. 2019].
 Australian computer society. (2019). ACS code of ethics. [online] Available at:
https://www.acs.org.au/content/dam/acs/acs-documents/Code-of-Ethics.pdf [Accessed
22 Aug. 2019].
 White, T. (n.d.). Resolving an Ethical Dilemma. [Online] Available at:
http://bourbon.usc.edu/engr102-f09/ethics.pdf. [Accessed 22 August 2019,]