MAN3065 Discussion 2
Describe a work related event or decision that you would judge to be clearly unethical. Can you think of any circumstances in which it would be ethical? Can you imagine a situation in which you yourself would do something unethical?
Please read and respond to the above questions. Then read and reply to at least two other students. In your response, you could ask your classmate a question, expand on one of his or her statements, ask for clarity on one of the points, etc.
When answering or responding to discussion questions be sure to write, in your own words, compelling arguments based on personal and/or professional experience, textbook and course materials, academic research, and cite brief
references other than the textbooks where appropriate. Also, be sure to consistently establish a linkage between the material being discussed, your workplace, or individual research.
The initial discussion post should be a 300-word count minimum and 100-word count minimum for peer responses.
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In my early twenties I was employed with a well-known company that provides services such as pay day loans. The company was investigated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) for pushing consumers into a cycle of debt that was impossible to get out of. The CFPB was established by Dodd-Frank following the mortgage crisis in 2008 to regulate and be the watchdog over the financial sector (Bagley, 2019). The CFPB was pushing to limit the amount of payday loans an individual can get annually and increase the amount of time between paying off one loan and taking out another. At the time, once a loan was paid you had to wait a 24-hour cooling off period before taking out another loan. The CFPB was going to increase the cool off period to 60 days. When this was announced, the company I worked for expected us to not provide this information when a client was paying off their payday loan unless the client asked. The location I worked at was in an impoverished area (as many of them are strategically placed) and I saw most of our clients once to twice a month. When you take out a payday loan, the amount you borrowed plus 10% interest, and a processing fee were due on your next payday. If you were to borrow $500, then $555 would be due in full on your next payday. This would force many of our clients to have to return to the following day to make ends meet. If I did not inform our clients of the new cool-off period, many of them would be left in an impossible financial situation. This was clearly unethical, and I was not able to abide by their decision.
The proposal by the CFPB was never passed and the cool off period is still 24 hours. The circumstances in which I feel this idea could have been implemented ethically is to provide notice to the clients prior to the loan being paid off. It would be necessary to provide different repayment options as well to ensure that our clients would not have been misled. I would like to say that I could not imagine myself doing something unethical, but the entire payday loan scheme is unethical, and I worked there for several years. I was not able to mislead my customers in this situation though. I began to tell our customers
