Ethical Dilemma

Dan Neville is the manager for a team of engineers at RFC, Inc. He is responsible for coordinating his team's efforts on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, as well as assuring that they are keeping on schedule with teams in other offices around the country. Dan regularly communicates with his own team via e-mail, attaching memos and instructions prior to their regular face-to-face meetings. Clear, consistent, and timely communication is an essential element of Dan's job.

Dan usually has no trouble with any member of the team understanding his instructions, except for Kyle Trenton. Kyle always seems to misunderstand or misinterpret Dan's messages, even during face-to-face meetings. Kyle doesn't seem to be deliberately being obstinate; he honestly derives other meanings from Dan's communications, reading into the words Dan chooses and coming up with implied ideas that Dan never intended.

Inevitably, Dan has to meet with Kyle separately to be certain that Kyle understands the tasks at hand. If left to his own devices, Kyle wouldn't come to Dan to question his interpretation of the message, because he sincerely believes he "gets it." However, Kyle is rarely clear about Dan's meanings, and Dan must devote extra time and energy to reorient Kyle. Dan tries to be sympathetic, because Kyle is a nice person and a good worker, but Kyle requires twice as much time from Dan as everyone else and it is frustrating. Dan does worry that if Kyle would happen to misunderstand critical directions on a building project which are not corrected, someone could legitimately get hurt.

Dan has an opportunity to move Kyle onto a new position, where he would no longer have to work with Dan's current team and Dan would no longer have to communicate with Kyle. However, Dan knows that Ken Rothberg is the head of that team, and Ken is known for being a very poor communicator. Dan suspects that Ken wouldn't take any additional time to make certain that Kyle understood his instructions, and that could cause even more critical problems.
Questions:
Using consequential, rule-based and character theories (Chapter 2), evaluate Dan's options.
What should Dan do? Why?