You don’t need to know anything going in, but you do need to know things coming out. Getting someone else to do half the work gets you the answers on this one occasion, but it says nothing about your capacity to get the answer next time.
Indeed it is.
I think the point of “open-book” exams passes me by. Too old-fashioned of me, perhaps? I don’t know. However, I’m sort of getting the impression that it’s a bullshit exam and everyone **knows **that it is (leaving me to wonder why it is done at all, as the only thing it can really accomplish is more money for the company/educational body/industry organisation/whatever running this “exam”) and I can see why, if that is the way the game is played and it will add to your pay-cheque, this cheating might hold a certain appeal for people.
Well, why not tell him that his answers were not very good, without giving him a crib-sheet? Even that is ethically dodgy, I suppose.
However, I suppose it’s pretty academic now. Ooh, now how is that for the wrong use of a word, eh? 
That is, you have already decided what to do in this case, and it sounds as though you have already decided not to involve yourself in similar clever ploys in future. And it’s fun to notice that you would both have passed the thing anyway, without this sort of thing. Pass exam and maintain self-respect or “pass” exam with a lot less of the other thing? And it is amazingly fun that it turned out to be a very educational experience anyway, albeit not in the way in which it was intended by these exam-setters
Aha, that could be the key to it all. 
However, don’t do it in that order. Steal the gold FIRST, as I somehow think it is often easier to find a woman than to find hoards of gold. We all usually meet many other humans in the course of our daily lives - useful stashes of gold, not so much.
What a minute!!! You said this was an on-line test. How could you possibly share the answers unless you did it at the same time???
Each of you would have to wait for the other person to finish 50 questions before you submitted it. AND would the person doing the last 50 be permitted to leave the first ones blank and skip ahead and then come back?
Maybe I’m missing something…
Just to clarify:
It is an online test. You are given a thick book when you register for it that contains a hard copy of the actual test as well as all the references you will need to answer the questions. The references are journal or textbook articles; at the bottom of each article it references which question the article applies to.
So, we each have a copy of the book. I answered my 50 in the book, as did he. Then we exchanged answers.
You have a four-month deadline by which time you must complete the online test. You can access it, answer a few questions, then go back whenever and answer a few more.
The test does not demonstrate your knowledge of the subject. It demonstrates your ability and your willingness to comb through the reference material until you find each answer.
The idea of sharing the answers was not to cheat the system, but to cut down on the time it would take to get this done.
MMR
Then if you didn’t research your own answers, you cheated. You didn’t do what you were supposed to do.
I already know I cheated; you’re not paying attention.
I don’t think the ethics of your previous action are really relevant to determining the ethics of a subsequent action. It’s stupid to thing that screwing up once means you can screw up as much as you like. Let’s reframe:
I knowingly lied to you about something important, and now you’re really mad at me. So, since the reason you’re mad at me is my own ethical mistake, I can now respond, let’s say, by physically assaulting you. I mean, I’ve already done something wrong, so there’s no reason I have to worry about doing something else wrong. Right? Yeah, no.
The question here seems to have multiple parts: does the initial agreement require you to help? I’d say no. You’re only responsible for what you agreed to.
The second part is: Would you otherwise tell this coworker (or anyone else) if you suspected they were going to fail. I would. So I’d see it as required to at least tell the guy that some of the answers were wrong.
Furthermore, there’s the fact that his getting questions on an open book test wrong is essentially reneging on the initial agreement. You have an ethical duty to deal with this. The passive aggressive approach would be to allow him to fail, but that fails on the second question above. Plus, passive aggressiveness rarely works out to your benefit. I think you have to tell him he reneged, and then tell him the consequences of doing so. I’d stick with some kind of “You owe me one” type thing.
[Random speculation]
Are you sure he gave you the answers he’s going to use when he does the test? If it’s not due until June, maybe he didn’t do his research yet. So maybe he just gave you 50 random “answers” and took your 50 well-researched answers?
Or maybe he’s just lazy and only researched enough questions to be pretty sure he’d pass.
Or maybe he purposefully gave you wrong answers because he doesn’t think cheating is right? Whose idea was it to swap answers?
[/RS]
I think that you’re ethically obligated to let him know, unless you believe that he cheated you by giving you bad answers intentionally. Ethics and morals are relative, and you must base your decision from the the point at which you placed your (very low) hurdle. Honor amongst thieves and all…
We had open-book exams (as well as ones in which you were permitted a single crib sheet) when I was in engineering school more than twenty years ago. And people who took the EIT exam said that it was also open-book (you’re allowed to bring as many books as you want). The idea is that in the real world you’d have access to the reference materials, so you should also have them on the exams.
As for the OP, did the co-worker just write down the multiple-choice selection (e.g., A, B or C)? If so, it’s entirely possible that the testing organization mixed up the correct answers so no two people had the same answer set.
I think you should tell him his answers were wrong. If you’re friendly enough to cook up and carry out this scheme, you’re friendly enough to say “Dude! Almost all of the answers you gave me were totally wrong. What’s up with that?”
If he wants the right answers from you, then you can give them to him if you want. Then again, don’t you want to work with someone who’s at least competent enough to research the right answers to half of a test? What if you suggest he re-do his half and he can cross reference with your answers?
He also might not give a shit if he passed anyway, and not ask for your answers at all.
But I still think that he should steal the gold.
The ethical thing to do would be to tell him that one of the answers you provided was incorrect, and provide him with the correct solution to the question. Telling him his answers are wrong would be nice, but is not morally obligatory.
OP here.
First of all, there is no question that we took the same test. The test itself - a hard copy of it - is in the book that was distributed. We exchanged actual photocopies of the test with our answers indicated. The hard copy tests mirrored the online test I took.
I’m sure he did not purposely screw this up. I believe he simply didn’t give it the careful attention that I did. Frequently, when looking for my answers, I ran across a wrong answer that seemed correct at first; after further reading, though, I often encountered the right answer. I think he simply didn’t put the time and effort into doing a thorough job. I think he thought it was easier than it, in fact, was.
When I see him next, I will ask if he wrote the exam yet. If not, I’ll say something similar to what ZipperJJ suggested (“Dude! Almost all of the answers you gave me were totally wrong. What’s up with that?”).
I will not offer him the correct answers. And if he asks, I’ll blow it off by saying that I didn’t write any of them down.
In other words, I’ll give him a heads-up, along with the opportunity to do the research properly like he was supposed to do from the get-go. I feel this is more generous than I need to be; hell, I’m giving him my 50 (OK, 49 :D) golden answers for very little in exchange.
MMM
But carve a big “Z” on his chest with your sword first.
Oh, wait - wrong swordsman. Nevermind…
I’d tell him he had a bunch of wrong answers, but don’t tell him which ones. Let him at least expend the skull sweat needed to figure out which ones. After all, you had to. You could wait until just before he takes the test himself, so that he goes in with almost as much warning as you did. And this way he’ll know WHY you won’t work with him next year.
Or you could just tell him that he should turn on the “score as you go” option, but not why, so he’ll learn firsthand that his answers were junk. That ought to take the wind out of his sails, too. I know I’d come out humbled if I was in his position.
But I wouldn’t work with him next year, and I’d wonder about his work in the time between now and then.
Would you mind telling us what industry you work in? Is this something likely to affect the lot of us? You’re not recertifying to operate a nuclear power plant, are you?
I like this.
Not to worry. As I’ve indicated, it’s a meaningless, bullshit exam.
When I was in college (in the 90’s, if that matters) open-book exams were hands-down the toughest kind, and most feared. The questions were such that if you didn’t have a good understanding of the material going into the test, a truckload of textbooks wasn’t going to help you.
In IT, there are tons of companies that offer education/exams to get certificates that are, when it comes down to it, not worth very much, but some employers like to see them on a resume. You are correct in thinking that many of these certificates are just money-making ventures for the companies that administer them.
Especially timed open book exams–if you had to look up the formulas or whatever for EVERY question, you’d complete possibly a third of the test max, at least in my college engineering classes (which were all timed open book exams).