Is it alright to be deceptive if doing so allows your company to get a contract?
The moral issues then include the following: Is lying an acceptable business prac- tice? Is it alright to be deceptive if doing so allows your company to get a contract? The answers to these questions are obvious: Lying and deceit are no more acceptable in your business life than in your personal life. So, if conceptually we decide that Paradyne’s practices were deceptive, then our analysis indicates that their actions were unethical.
4.3 LINE DRAWING The line-drawing technique that will be described in this section is especially useful for situations in which the applicable moral principles are clear, but there seems to be a great deal of “gray area” about which ethical principle applies. Line drawing is performed by drawing a line along which various examples and hypothetical situa- tions are placed. At one end is placed the “positive paradigm,” an example of some- thing that is unambiguously morally acceptable. At the other end, the “negative paradigm,” an example of something that is unambiguously not morally acceptable, is placed. In between is placed the problem under consideration, along with other similar examples. Those examples that more closely conform to the positive para- digm are placed near it, and examples closer to the negative paradigm are placed near that paradigm. By carefully examining this continuum and placing the moral problem under consideration in the appropriate place along the line, it is possible to determine whether the problem is more like the positive or negative paradigm and therefore whether it is acceptable or unacceptable.