Marta

"Donna" sent in the following email today about a business case. The email is in italics and I'll add my comments in the body as you read along:

I just read a very interesting case for my Ethic & Business class, but I'm very confused about the ethical dilemma of this case.

So you're getting outside help for your ethics course? Is this ethical? (just kidding - the whole point of case studies is to start a discussion, and more importantly to learn how to argue your case since there is typically no "right" answer - you can read everything I write and still hold the opposite opinion).

The case is called Martha McCaskey. It is about a consultant Martha McCaskey, whose company was hired to get detailed information (e.g. cost and manufacturing process) of their competitor's new chip.

First, this is what consultants are hired to do. Getting the scoop on your competitor is not unethical, it's business. But there are ethical ways get this sort of data and there are unethical ways.

McCaskey was assigned to pay a former employee of this manufacturing firm to supply her with these information.

This is the unethical way.

A typical consultant, when asked this sort of data, will come up with something close to an estimate - or educated guess - based on publicly available data, expertise of the market, and maybe even a "tear-down" of the product, bought on the open market.

I regularly pay for "tear-down reports", which come with cost estimates and guesses on how the product is made. Just this week I got a report on the iPhone. The guys who did the report are a bunch of engineers from industry who do this for a living, are public about what they do, and everything is on the up-and-up. In the past I have even bought tear-down reports on my own company's products to see how accurate the report is (they are usually in the general ballpark, but obviously miss a lot).

But asking a former employee right out for this information is crossing the ethics line. It...