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whom may not see writing and speaking as primary job functions. Consequently, they

may underestimate the importance of writing and speaking and fail to see the ethical

stakes.

Although both professional communicators and professionals who communicate

many make ethical decisions, many tend to exercise ethical judgment intuitively (Faber,

1999). In doing so, people unconsciously reify a system of values and beliefs. Although

communication is always value-laden, some critical distance is required for

communicators to see how the values and beliefs implicit in a text potentially conflict

with those belonging to their readers (Kienzler, 2001). When they do so, communicators

are more likely to recognize ethical issues and other areas of particular ethical concern,

including:

Uses and misuses of visual information

Culturally-biased communication

Plagiarism

Audience vs. Employer Advocacy

Cognitive burden of communicative choices

The above issues are important points of consideration for professional

communicators, especially with regard to how they ply their trade. Numerous published

accounts (Allen, 1995; Bryan, 1996; Dombrowski, 1999; Dragga 1996; Sims, 1993;

Webber, 1995) address these issues. Most of these sources and others like them carefully

situate their recommendations for best practices in a more comprehensive discussion of

the rhetorical activities involved in responding to a communicative situation. Rhetorical

activity is the focus of this module as well. The scenarios in this module encourage

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readers to consider the work that reports, memos, emails, conversations, and

presentations do. Readers should consider the impressions that texts create and how texts

help encourage relationships between communicators, organizations, and their audiences.

The subject of this module is ethics in business communication. The audience,

however, includes any student of professional communication or any student in a

business-related field where writing and speaking form part of a core set of skills that one

must exercise in the workplace.

Ethical Conflicts in Context

Central to the discussion of ethics in this module is a communicators sometimes-

conflicted relationship with an audience and with the people on whose behalf they are

communicating. Communicators must negotiate between two different roles (Faber,

2002): as members of a profession and as advocates for their audiences. This dual

position can, but does not necessarily, result in a conflict of interest that clouds other

ethical decisions one may need to make.

On one hand, a professional communicator works for the maintenance and betterment

of a given profession. The communicator supports a professions interests by producing

documents to reify that professions provenance over a particular body of knowledge or

set of skilled practices. Communicators in all manner of professional settings become

skilled at producing texts that their colleagues use to exercise their professional duties

(e.g., study protocols, contracts, design forms, and proposals). In other words,

communicators have a vested interest in promoting the interests of their employers. On

the other hand, a communicator is also an advocate for the audience, one who makes

information usable to those who need it. Fulfilling this role, the communicator is

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responsible for making information accessible and usable for the purposes that the

audience brings to it.

In some cases, the motives of professionals and audiences do not match, and

herein is seed of many potential ethical conflicts. As communicators make information

more accessible and directly usable by their audiences, they change the nature and

necessity of the relationship between the audience and the professional(s) whose interests

are ideally served by those texts. To preserve a professionals role, communicators must

selectively overlook their responsibilities to audiences. How should communicators

serve both constituencies when different values are at stake? Situations like these present

clear ethical conflicts without obvious solutions. They are the subject of this module, and

thinking through these problems will encourage readers to understand how to apply the

best practices of professional communication.

A Code of Ethical Business Communication

To this point, we have portrayed communication ethics as complex, uncertain,

context-dependent, and frequently driven by conflicting motivations. This is not to say

that communication ethics cannot be guided by philosophical notions of ethical conduct.

A number of authors have suggested that it can, by subscribing to philosophies that

propose universal (see Markel 1993; 1997) situated (Markel 1997) or cross-cultural

(Dragga, 1999) approaches to applying ethical standards. In the abstract, however, these

guidelines stand apart from the contexts in which communicators actually make and bear

the consequences of their decisions. Considering that communicators serve professions,

readers may find it useful to examine the code of ethics supported by the International

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Association for Business Communication (http://www.iabc.com/about/code.htm), which

offers a more detailed set of guidelines. From the website:

1. Professional communicators uphold the credibility and dignity of their profession

by practicing honest, candid and timely communication and by fostering the free

flow of essential information in accord with the public interest.

2. Professional communicators disseminate accurate information and promptly

correct any erroneous communication for which they may be responsible.

3. Professional communicators understand and support the principles of free speech,

freedom of assembly, and access to an open marketplace of ideas; and, act

accordingly.

4. Professional communicators are sensitive to cultural values and beliefs and

engage in fair and balanced communication activities that foster and encourage

mutual understanding.

5. Professional communicators refrain from taking part in any undertaking which the

communicator considers to be unethical.

6. Professional communicators obey laws and public policies governing their

professional activities and are sensitive to the spirit of all laws and regulations

and, should any law or public policy be violated, for whatever reason, act

promptly to correct the situation.

7. Professional communicators give credit for unique expressions borrowed from

others and identify the sources and purposes of all information disseminated to the

public.

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8. Professional communicators protect confidential information and, at the same

time, comply with all legal requirements for the disclosure of information

affecting the welfare of others.

9. Professional communicators do not use confidential information gained as a result

of professional activities for personal benefit and do not represent conflicting or

competing interests without written consent of those involved.

10. Professional communicators do not accept undisclosed gifts or payments for

professional services from anyone other than a client or employer

11. Professional communicators do not guarantee results that are beyond the power of

the practitioner to deliver

12. Professional communicators are honest not only with others but also, and most

importantly, with themselves as individuals; for a professional communicator

seeks the truth and speaks that truth first to the self. (IABC, 2006, Articles)

While the IABC may provide a code of ethics that is most topically suited to the

scenarios in this module, others publish applicable codes as well. For example:

Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW):

http://english.ttu.edu/attwtest/ATTWcode.asp

Society for Technical Communication (STC): http://216.35.212.183/code.html

American Medical Writers Association (AMWA):

http://www.amwa.org/about/ethics/html

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM):

http://www.acm.org/constitution/code.html

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Many of the codes from the IABC specify how a communicator should act in the

abstract. They exhort the communicator not to use information without appropriate

attribution, to provide accurate information, to promote the free flow of information, and

to maintain the confidentiality of information to which they have been entrusted. The

guidelines also recommend that communicators attempt to understand and accommodate

their various audiences, to provide information that is timely, to respect the welfare of

others, and to understand their legal obligations. While these codes do specify

communication practices, they are equally useful as heuristics for assessing a situation

and determining what could be an ethical course of action. For this reason, readers will

find the guidelines helpful when considering the scenarios included in this module.

In this module, we do not present cases where there are obvious and egregious

breaches of ethical conduct. Although many textbooks that cover communication ethics

present such situations, those presented here attempt to complicate ethical decisions by

sketching a more detailed picture of the motivations and interests that are in conflict.

Readers are encouraged to consider the complexities of making an ethical

decision. Each scenario poses a problem regarding how a communicator should handle

an exchange of information. We have attempted to provide enough information about the

writer, the form of communication, the organization, and the audience to add a degree of

realism. Against each context of complicated motives, readers can consider which

actions would be the most ethical. In other words, these scenarios attempt to highlight

ethical dilemmas, where no decision is obvious and no decision is free of consequences.

Even when all factors are weighed, the ethical decision may not always be the easiest one

to make.

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We expect these decisions to be difficult to make, and we expect to uncover

disagreements, which may reveal how closely readers identify with different parties in the

scenario. To encourage consideration and discussion of alternatives, we have included

answers from others who have considered the scenarios. Immediately following each

scenario is a summary of responses from 29 students enrolled in MBA or Executive MBA

programs. Where available, we have included their written comments. Following these

comments is an extended discussion/interview with Professor Paul F. Williams, a

business ethicist at NC State University. In these interviews, Professor Williams

discusses the nature of the ethical dilemma in each scenario and then offers a course of

action.

Concluding each scenario is a list of discussion questions that ask readers to

consider both why they choose the response that they did and how they might craft a text

to carry out their decisions. Overall, the discussion is intended to move readers from a

consideration of what constitutes an ethical response in the abstract to considering how to

act on that decision in the form of a piece of written or spoken communication.

Scenario 1

1. Topics to lead into Scenario #1 (Kelly and her decision to include default loans

during a particularly bad year)

a. What is the Professional Communicators Role: as Reader Advocate

(State) or Professions Advocate (NPO)

b. Kelly as the readers advocate

c. Kelly as a member of and advocate of a profession/organization

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2. Topics that lead into Scenario #2 (reveal Angel funding to VCs before the

funding has been fully secured).

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References

Allen, N. (1996). Ethics and visual rhetorics: Seeings not believing anymore. TechnicalCommunication Quarterly, 5(1): 87-105.

Bryan, J. (1995). Seven types of distortion: A taxonomy of manipulative techniques usedin charts and graphs. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 25(2): 127-179.

Devitt, A.J. (1991). Intertextuality in tax accounting: Generic, referential, and functional.In C. Bazerman and J. Paradis (Eds.) Textual Dynamics of the Professions: Historical

and Contemporary Studies of Writing in Professional Communities (pp. 336-357).

Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

Dombrowski, P.M. (1999). Ethics in technical communication. New York: Longman.

Dragga, S. (1996). Is this ethical?: A survey of opinion on principles and practices ofdocument design. Technical Communication, 43 (3), 255-265.

Dragga, S. (1999). Ethical intercultural communication. Technical CommunicationQuarterly, 8(4): 365-382.

Faber, B. (1999). Intuitive ethics: Understanding and critiquing the role of intuition inethical decisions. Technical Communication Quarterly, 8 (2), 189-202.

Faber, B. (2002). Professional identities: What is professional about professional

communication? Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 16(3), 306-337.

Kienzler, D. (2001). Ethics, critical thinking, and professional communication pedagogy.Technical Communication Quarterly, 10(3): 319-339.

Markel, M. (1993). An ethical imperative for technical communication. IEEE

Transactions on Professional Communication 36(2): 81-86.

Markel, M. (1997). Ethics and technical communication: A case for foundational

approaches. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication40(4): 284-289.

Sims, B. (1993). Linking ethics and language in the technical communication classroom.

Technical Communication Quarterly, 2(3): 285-299.

Webber, J. H. (1995). Ethics in scientific and technical communication [Electronicversion]. WISENET Journal, 38:2-4. http://www.jeanweber.com/about/ethics.htm

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