1. Exactly what kind of conflict seems present?
• This conflict occurs within a single practical domain. The information given from the Korean steel manufacturing company is not public information. With the knowledge of this information, Karen Park is not able to use this for coming strike in the proforma income statement to present to her boss.
2. Establish the relevant facts
• Karen Park has indicated that the information from the Korean steel manufacturing company is not public information, therefore not applicable for the knowledge of her boss or clients. This is enough evidence and information to determine this as an unethical situation if the knowledge is present in the proforma income statement delivered …show more content…
What alternatives are available?
• Options for acting would be to bring this information to the boss, give this information to the public, give this information to certain individuals, or keep this information private. With the understanding of the ethical codes within the business, it would be extremely unwise to act out from this disclosed information.
4. Evaluating Alternative Actions Use Kantian, Utilitarian, Rawlsian, and virtue-ethical reasoning to evaluate the options available. Under these moral theories, you will ask:
• Under utilitarian reasoning, Karen may see that giving this information to the public would be doing a great service to the greater good of investors. This is flawed in the aspect of giving the public information that the giver of knowledge may not have wanted to be broadcasted.
• Using the Kantian approach, if Karen publicly exposed the upcoming strike, then everyone should expose all upcoming truths. A complete transparent economy will not work because new information is being examined in a daily basis and without thorough examination, the public may be …show more content…
The information being public at the wrong time could result in immediate cuts on wages and the loss of jobs. This negative effect would result in the poorest citizens becoming even more poor, making the country worse off as a whole.
5. Choose and Act
• Karen needs to understand that she has information about the workers that can affect millions of workers. The best course of action would be to leave the information out of the proforma completely and just stick with the numbers she has off of raw data and future projections.
• According to the CFA Standards of Professional Conduct, this is a misuse of the integrity of capital markets and information provided to Karen. Standards that could apply to this situation include II(A), I(D) and I(A). This is most closely labeled under Standard II(A), if the information is not yet public, Karen cannot use this information and a violation has occurred.
6. Reflect and Repair
• If Karen followed through with putting this information on her proforma or using it in any way, she would have conducted the project in an unethical