Introduction to Business Ethics

An upcoming meeting with your new company's chief executive officer (CEO) and other executives is a great opportunity for you to share your knowledge of potentially defective products being sold to customers. You are not sure if others are aware of this issue, and the defective products could possibly lead to serious injuries. To complicate matters, you are uncertain about your organization's ethical guidelines because none have been communicated.

How would you present this issue to the CEO, directors, and managers? What specific courses of action would you recommend with respect to internal actions and customer notification?

First thing that would need to be done is research. Once I have discovered that there is a potential threat with one or more of the products that my company offers I would do an extensive search on the products. My search would consist of the internet personal and public reviews of any similar products and if there has been any recalls or accidents for anyone using the products.

I would also include how the defect affects the performance and safety of the product. If the defect is due to the presence of a foreign object, describe the foreign objects' size, composition, hardness, and sharpness. If possible I would test some of the products myself to see if indeed they are defective and use this as part of my information to present to the team.

In addition to accessing online resources for user-generated information about satisfied and dissatisfied customers. Review their complaints and the course of action they followed to resolve their issues. Review the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) guidelines on products that are similar to what my company is selling. The main purpose of this research is to get all the facts before making the assumption that we are selling a defective product to the CEO of the company.

Think of ideas that correct the problem at hand. Nothing would be worse than to walk into a room of executives and tell them that they have a defective product, which could endanger lives of customers and the business and not have a plan of action of how to correct it. If all possible depending on the product I would have a cost analysis prepared to bring to the meeting. This way they know how much this is going to cost and save the company. The saving would come by the way of not have law suits on the products.

Creating an action plan would be the next step in the process. Because this is a potential liability to the customer and overall well-being of the company consumer notification is a must. Having a list prepared of all customers that have bought the defective products. If the customers provided an email I would also have this listed as well as a rough draft of an email blast that could be sent to all customers. I would also prepare a standard letter that should be sent to customers. All of these items would be ready to distribute at the meeting. By doing all of this leg work myself I will present to the executives how passionate I am about the company and the customers that we serve.

Making an internal process to eliminate any future issues would be the next item that I would add to my list of the team. Put a management review process put in place. If there already is a process in place then that should be looked at to find where this could have been prevented. In addition, review any reason and circumstances that may possibly specify somewhere action is required. Where it might specify the probably for defects and should be looked into for further review by management. The amounts of remedial or precautionary action needed to be taken are dependent upon and is associated to the hazard, magnitude and cause of the issue and its direct cause on merchandise.

I would recommend that our procedures describe how to apply corrective action, how it should be carried out and the effectiveness of the results established.

Records relating to the product performance should be analyzed regularly, to detect trends and to identify areas of risk that may lead to defects. The analysis should also determine how to prevent any identified potential problems. Managers would also be required to report out during any management meeting of finding that products were produced with defects. By adding this step to the managers we would ensure that when there is a problem