Question

You work in the Ethics Department for ABC Company (ABC). Your department is dedicated to advising its employees about their ethical obligations in the corporate setting. You are an internal consultant who provides advice and most importantly, recommendations for action to employees of the firm. All communications you receive in this capacity are confidential. Luke, an employee of ABC, comes to you with the following scenario and asks for your advice.

He wants to fully consider the situation. Your task is to advise and recommend a course of action based on the specified ethical lenses and facts as given. Below are the facts that Luke provides to you.

Luke has been asked to work on a project that involves developing land recently purchased by ABC to build an adult entertainment retail store. According to the plan, the land is located on the corner of the neighborhood where Owen, Luke’s brother, lives. Luke knows that as soon as the plans for the store are made public, property values for the surrounding neighborhood will decrease significantly. ABC plans to publicly announce the project one month from today. Luke is concerned about his obligations of confidentiality to his company. However, Luke is also very close to Owen, who recently told Luke that he received an offer to sell his house at an "okay" price given the current real estate market. Owen is considering selling but hasn’t made any final decision yet. He wonders if he might get a better offer a few years from now when the real estate market improves.

Required:
What is the ethical issue, why is this an issue, and what should Luke do about it?

Answer 1

The ethical issue here is that you work for a company that is about to open a store that will make the price of your brother's house to plummet. Your brother has the option to sell his house right now, but if you tell him to accept the offer, you will be breaching your employment duties.

Is your duty towards your brother more or less important than the duty towards the company.

We can analyze both possible outcomes:

1. You do not tell your brother and he does not sell his house. After the store is announced, your brother's house will decrease in value. That means that your brother will lose a lot of money, but you complied with the obligation of confidentiality that you have with your company. The downside is that once your brother knows about it, he will hate you for ht rest of his life. And the hatred will probably not be limited to only him, most if not all of your family will be very unpleased and terribly mad at you.
2. On the other hand, you decide that you value your brother and whole family, and you decide to tell him to accept the offer. You will have breached your confidentiality obligation towards the company, but you will have literally saved your brother's financial situation, and you will have saved any type of relationship that you have with your family. Wil the company be hurt by your decision? No, it will not make any difference to them. They are announcing the decision in just a few days, so anything that you tell your brother will not make any difference. Since your brother will try to sell his house, he will keep to information to himself, since telling other people will only ruin any possible sale.

Personally, I would first try to convince my brother to sell his house because the offer is good and its the appropriate time to do it. If he gets stubborn and refuses, then I would tell him about the new store. If we have a good relationship, it is possible that I will not need to him about the store at all. Probably if i try hard enough I will be able to convince him to sell without disclosing any confidential information.