Even the most ethical people sometimes face difficult choices. Acting ethically means behaving in a principled fashion and treating other people with respect and dignity.

It is simple to say, but not so simple to do since some situations are complex or ambiguous. The important role of ethics in our lives has long been recognized. As far back as 44 B.C., Cicero said that ethics are indispensable to anyone who wants to have a good career. Having said that, Cicero, along with some of the greatest minds over the centuries, struggled with what the rules of ethics should be.

Our ethics are rooted in our history, culture, and religion, and our sense of ethics may shift over time. The electronic age brings with it a new dimension in the ethics debate-the amount of personal information that we can collect and store, and the speed with which we can access and process that information.

PROJECT FOCUS In a team, discuss how you would react to the following situations:

1. A senior marketing manager informs you that one of her employees is looking for another job and she wants you to give her access to look through her e-mail.

2. A vice president of sales informs you that he has made a deal to provide customer information to a strategic partner, and he wants you to burn all of the customer information onto a DVD.

3. You are asked to monitor your employee's e-mail to discover if he is sexually harassing another employee.

4. You are asked to install a video surveillance system in your office to watch if employees are taking office supplies home with them.

5. You are looking on the shared network drive and discover that your boss's entire hard drive has been copied to the network for everyone to view. What do you do?

6. You have been accidentally copied on an e-mail from the CEO, which details who will be the targets of the next round of layoffs. What would you do?