HREL 250 – Business Dynamics

Workplace Ethics Case Study

Weight: 15%

Due: The start of the first class in Week 4 (Feb 1, 2, 3 depending on

your section)

Details: Working individually, students will read the provided case study and
provide analysis of ethical issues and recommendations for action.

For reference, use:

a) Canadian Information Processing Society – Code of Ethics

b) ASET – Code of Ethics
c) Ethics for Everyone PPT
d) Office Politics e-book

Students shall:

1. Read the provided case study.

2. Select five of the issues brought forward by the case study.

3. Each issue is worth 4 points. For each:

a. Explain why it is an issue

(you MUST refer to the references a and b listed
above) (2).

b. Provide a recommendation for what action Jonathan Jones

should take, given where he is at NOW (not what he SHOULD
have done, but what he still CAN do. (you MUST refer to
the references c and d listed above) (2).

Submit: A hard copy at the beginning of class. The document should be

formatted as a memo addressed to your instructor, and follow
appropriate technical writing guidelines (headings).
The Situation:

Jonathan Jones was ecstatic. He had just been phoned by a partner in a local
accounting firm and offered a job as the IT Manager. It wasn’t the largest company
around – 20 employees – but the experience would look good on his resume. This
job was a nice stepping stone, imagine, “Manager IT Services” for Shifty, Sleezy and
Sly Chartered Accountants (SSS CA). This was going to be fun …

Jonathan showed-up early the first day of work. He was ushered into Samuel
Shifty’s office at 8:00 am sharp. Sam took Jonathan over to the cube that would be
his new office, gave a rousing speech about how important “people” were to the
firm, about professionalism, integrity, and promptly left, leaving Jonathan with a
myriad of unanswered questions. “Oh well,” thought Jonathan, “I’ve got a cool job
title.”

As the days on the job passed, Jonathan started to notice some interesting things
about the systems he was supporting. For starters, the partners spent most of their
time preparing tax returns using a package Jonathan had never heard of before, a
package called “Tax Avoidance.” The version they were using seemed to be a year
out-of-date, probably a pretty critical thing in the tax business. After checking on
the internet, Jonathan found Tax Avoidance was widely used by CA firms and should
have been updated by the software company a couple of times a year in order to
stay current with the tax legislation, which was always changing. It looked like the
accountants who used the system to prepare tax returns were doing manual
adjustments to accommodate any recent changes to the tax law made since the
package was new. As Jonathan started looking at the package a little more
carefully, he noticed that “Find Gold Partners” seemed to be the registered owners.
It didn’t take Jonathan long to start suspecting the package was copied, probably
illegally – what had the previous manager been thinking? Jonathan decided he had
to tell Sam Shifty, the managing partner of the firm, at his weekly meeting. It was
funny though, when the meeting came, Sam didn’t seem to want to deal with the
licensing issue. Sam mumbled something about being part of the team, getting
with the program, not worrying about what the previous manager had done, and
besides, software was way too expensive. Jonathan didn’t feel right about the
software, but Sam had made it plain: if Jonathan wanted to work at SSS CA, he was
going to have to “get along” with how the firm worked. Jonathan didn’t know what
to do.

Late one afternoon, as Jonathan was investigating the accounting package, he came
upon another interesting situation. It turned-out that Jonathan had access to all the
system data for the past year. SSS CA was one of the leading tax practices in the
city, and a number of prominent business people used the firm to prepare their
taxes. Curiosity got the better of him, and Jonathan started flipping through some
of the files. Wow, he couldn’t believe how much money some of these people made
– they made his salary look awfully small. He even noticed a few people he had
actually met. Fred Plummer (who coincidentally, was a plumber) made more money
than one of Jonathan’s University professors. Jonathan snickered to himself, what if
he told his old professor about how low his salary looked? That would get him back
for that “D.” Who said IT can’t be fun?

One of the other things that worried Jonathan was an available job position in the
network support area. The job had been unfilled for several months, and work was
piling-up. Network Technologists were hard to get these days, and Jonathan wasn’t
quite sure how to go about filling the job. He knew that his girlfriend, Jenny, had
mentioned that her brother, Max, was supposed to be pretty good with networks,
and coincidently, happened to be out of work. Jonathan mentioned the job opening
one night to Jenny, who immediately mentioned how badly Max needed work (Max’s
wife was pregnant, and with Max out of work, they were very worried about money
coming in). Jonathan asked Jenny about Max’s qualifications, but Jenny didn’t seem
to know much about how competent Max was in the network field. Max had
apparently attended BBIT (Billy Bob’s Institute of Technology), but didn’t graduate.
Jenny didn’t know about things like CCNA or CCNP, but she reaffirmed just how
badly Max needed work. Life was getting a lot more complicated, and fast. The
thing was, Jonathan had been thinking pretty seriously about his future with Jenny,
he’d even checked out the price of engagement rings … ahhggh, he thought, out of
exasperation!

Jonathan actually had a background in networks himself, although his certifications

had expired a couple of months ago. He really needed to be current in that area,
especially if he hired Max. It was going to be expensive and time consuming to get
his “certs” updated. The last place Jonathan had worked was pretty good around
supporting currency requirements; they usually paid for any update training, gave
their employees study time, and paid for the cost of writing the exam. Jonathan
was a little depressed about the cost and effort needed. Sam Shifty might pay for
Jonathan, except for one little thing … Jonathan had written his resume in a way
that implied his certifications were current. It seemed like an innocent thing at the
time, after all, they’d just expired - now things were going from bad to worse. Oh
well, given enough time, he could probably muddle along and figure out how to
keep the network running. You never know, he might even get some overtime out
of it!

As the days wore on, Jonathan seemed to be pretty far from solving his dilemmas.
Things got so depressing that he started leaving early a few nights each week just
so that he could avoid facing the issues. He found he could leave by the back
hallway without being spotted by Sam or any of the other partners. His Blackberry
made it possible for Jonathan to be sitting in the local pub, while giving the
appearance that he was on the job back in the office. “You’ve got to love
technology,” Jonathan thought to himself, but he was miserable none the less. He
had always prided himself in his work ethic, and by his self image as an honest,
competent IT professional, although lately, he was starting to wonder if he shouldn’t
start practicing with his guitar … maybe it wasn’t too late to be a studio musician?