You are the senior software engineer at a start-up company developing an exciting new product that will allow salespeople to generate and email sales quotes and customer invoices from their smartphones. Your company's sales force has led a major corporation to believe your product will be available next week. Unfortunately, at this point the package still contains quite a few bugs. The leader of the testing group has reported that all of the known bugs appear to be minor, but it will take another month of testing for his team to be confident the product contains no catastrophic errors. Because of the fierce competition in the smartphone software industry, it is critical that your company be the "first to market." To the best of your knowledge, a well-established company will release a similar product in a few weeks. If its product appears first, your start-up company will probably go out of business.

Questions

1. Should you recommend release of the product next week?

2. Who will benefit if the company follows your recommendation?

3. Who will be harmed if the company follows your recommendation?

4. Do you have an obligation to any group of people that may be affected by your decision?

5. What additional information, if any, would help you answer the previous questions?