Philosophical Moral-Ethical Issue
Ethical Dilemma: You are the CEO (chief executive officer, in other words, the person in charge) of a very successful non-profit organization in a city in the United States. Your organization has been responsible for supporting many highly effective educational and cultural initiatives, including work with public schools, towns and municipalities (assisting in downtown revitalization, for instance), and even infrastructure advances, such as bringing high speed internet to more remote locations. You are about to receive a major donation (think $1 million+) from a very successful retired local business person who is impressed with your organization’s work. However, you are contacted by a local newspaper reporter that one of your board members has been accused of sexual harassment by a number of co-workers several years ago, prior before working for your organization.This board member is also a personal friend of the potential donor, who has let it be known to you that the money will be donated in part because of that friendship. The reporter has asked to speak with you and that the story will run in paper within 48 hours (whether you go “on the record” or not). You have known this board member for some time; you have no personal knowledge of any complaints or concerns raised by anyone during this particular time period. What do you do– and why? In other words, what ethical system are you engaging as a framework to help you make decisions, why are you employing it (rather than other possible systems), and how are you going to employ it to ensure that an ethical response (or set of responses) occurs? You may use ANY ethical perspective we’ve encountered so far to help with your response and also employ documented outside readings.
