I’ve already decided how I’m going to approach this situation, but I’m interested in hearing feedback from some Dopers. Here is the deal:
I am required to take an open-book, on-line exam to maintain a certification for work. It is sorta a bullshit certification - the organization basically wants me to cut them a check every year - but it does earn me some extra dollars and I view it as necessary.
The test has 100 questions. A co-worker and I agreed to split the test and share answers (feel free to debate the ethics of this as well). He took the first 50, I was assigned to the last 50.
So, we each completed our 50 questions and exchanged answer sheets. I logged in to the exam and settled in to breeze through the test. Imagine my surprise when three of my (his) first five answers were incorrect! (you have the option of scoring as you go)
From that point on, I got a little nervous. I ended up verifying most of the remaining answers myself before committing to an response. I found many more that he answered incorrectly, which means I would have answered incorrectly too if I had blindly followed his answer sheet. This double-checking on my part took a significant amount of time (it added maybe two hours or so).
70% is the required passing grade. Of his 50 answers, 20 were wrong.
Of my 50 answers, one was wrong.
I ended up passing with a score of 72%.
Here is my dilemma: Do I warn him how badly he screwed this up (it is very unlikely that he has taken and submitted the test yet, we have until June)? Do I give him all the correct answers (which I could easily do as I’ve written them down)?
Interestingly enough, if I don’t tell him and he submits all our answers as is, he will get exactly 70%
I’d warn him that he doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does, but I would not share the additional answers. To be fair, I wouldn’t have shared any answers with him in the first place, cause I have a real problem with riders of the coat-tails. I am very confident in my own abilities, not so much the abilities of others.
I have an ethical dilemma: My neighbor and I ran a garage sale together, and I was manning the cashbox when a customer came up and paid for some items with $100 bill. As the customer was loading the items in his car, I discovered that by accident he had given me TWO $100 bills stuck together.
So the dilemma: should I tell my neighbor, or not?
I think my retelling sucked all the humor out of it. But the underlying point of the joke, the OP’s dilemma, are related. Having already settled in your mind your decision to act unethically, you now seek guidance on whether you should act more unethically.
I know what you’re saying, Otternell, but it’s not really a matter of ‘knowing’; it’s a matter of being able to dig answers out that are buried in the text provided.
You are right, though; next year I’ll just do it all myself.
At first blush, the answer is: it’s ethical not to. You’re undoubtedly forbidden from discussing the specific questions and answers that are on the test with someone that hasn’t taken it.
But you entered into an agreement with this other guy to cheat. So what you’re now asking is: may I ethically breach my agreement with him?
It’s akin to robbing a liquor store and getting caught, while your accomplice gets away. Is it ethical to reveal your accomplice’s name to the police?
Yes. You should never have entered into the agreement in the first place to do something wrong. Since you have suddenly rediscovered an interest in doing the right thing, you should act accordingly and not share the results of your test experience with him.
Bricker means it basically doesn’t matter. You both cheated on the test. Whether he is told he cheated badly is of no ethical concern. You both behaved unethically either way.
I don’t get it. You got 49/50 correct and he got 30/50 correct. So if he used your two sets, wouldn’t he get a 79%? And how did you score under 79% if you checked and changed his answers?
I didn’t find all the incorrect answers; knowing I had a cushion, I went ahead with many of the answers that turned out to be incorrect. As things went on, though, I became aware of the need to be more vigilant and did a lot more researching and double-checking before committing to each answer.
Right, but the point is, the WORST you could have done should have been 79%, unless you took his correct answers and substituted incorrect ones, which I will assume wasn’t the case. Barring that, your math is…odd. He should get a 79% and not 70% if he submits everything as-is. You should have scored somewhere between 79% and 99%.
I suspect that if it’s open book and his answers were that far off, the exam questions get changed a little each time shown online. Otherwise people might cheat and write down the answers and do something unethical, like share them with somebody else?
I have no issue with you splitting the work–with an open-book, untimed test you don’t need to know anything going in to ace the thing because you can look up every single answer with no penalty, so it’s not like you’re taking unfair advantage.
No, you don’t tell him how badly he did on the test and give him the rest of the right answers. When you agree to split a task with someone, there’s rather an onus on you to make sure you do your part correctly so they don’t suffer for your mistakes. This guy didn’t didn’t hold up his end of that bargain; according to your calculations, he only got somewhere between 45 and 60% of his answers right, which is a failing grade. Putting in that kind of slipshod work, he deserves to fail. But he won’t, because your right answers will pull him up to a passing grade, which is far more than he deserves. I can’t imagine what you’re smoking to think of giving him even more.
Let his lousy score be a lesson to him to do his work right in the future, and let this whole thing be a lesson to you to not try to lazy out of stuff with schemes like this.
