Case Study: Internship Ethics

This case study made me realize I’m much less sure about how I would act in this kind of situation. Before starting, I would’ve said that if I were given orders by my employer that felt morally irresponsible, I would make clear to my boss that I refuse to comply, even if it meant being asked to leave the company. After reading through Susan’s perspective, I realized that my confidence in this conviction stems from a place of privilege. For one, I’ve never been asked to do something unethical for work, and the SWE space is so vast that were I to leave an unethical employer, I could probably find work with a company whose values align with mine. However, I understand that this isn’t the case for most people, and might not be the case for me, depending on the state of the job market after I graduate, so given that practically no one can take job security for granted, the possibility of long-term negative consequences for someone’s career as a result of any kind of disagreement with a superior becomes more likely. I watched a show called Barry which talks about the ethics of war and who’s responsible for a murder, the mouth that gives the order or the hand that pulls the trigger. This came to mind when I considered that in an ethical dilemma like this, while I’d like to be able to say that I was doing what I had to to keep my job, I’d know that my choice to be involved in an action I disagreed with would be a clear failure to hold myself to my own moral standards.