You are a male/ female who is struggling to make ends meet. You have 2 kids and are trying very hard to provide for them and your family.
You are a Police recruit about to graduate from the academy. The foundation of your experience in the academy has taught you that integrity is the forefront for which all officers must be judged.
Without integrity, you have nothing.
You take the final exam of your 24 week course of study and find out you have passed by one point. The final exam is returned to you so that you may review what you missed.
Upon review, you discover the instructor actually marked a question correct on your exam that you actually got wrong.
You actually failed the final exam for which there are NO re-takes.
Do you inform the instructor of the discrepancy and accept that you will fail the academy?
Do you return the test, only to go into a box in the bottom of a vault for eternity?
When I was in college (not police academy though), I did actually point out to the instructor a couple of times when they made a mistake in my favor adding up points on the exam. (I was also perfectly willing to draw it to their attention if they made a mistake not in my favor, natch.) I don’t recall an instructor ever taking away the undeserved points.
So that’s what I think would be the ideal solution: honest recruit reports the scoring error, academy thanks them for their conscientiousness but lets the passing grade stand.
On the other hand, if the recruit is not actually tasked to alert the authorities to grading errors (and indeed it should not be a testee’s responsibility to make sure that exams are scored correctly), then I don’t really see anything positively dishonest in just ignoring the error. Maybe the instructor in fact deliberately marked the wrong answer correct as compensation for extra good work you did on a different problem, or something. If it’s not part of your honor-code responsibilities to detect and report possible errors in scoring your test, then ISTM that this whole big ethical dilemma is more or less a non-issue.
I probably do nothing, but not because of choosing to be dishonest (not consciously anyway).
It’s not my job to mark the paper. For all I know there may be other questions marked wrong that may be technically right.
It’s really not worth picking through it all, unless we flip it and I failed my one-shot chance for what seems like an unfair reason.
There have been situations similar to this in my real life, where I’ve pointed out mistakes even though it harms my position.
But under the terms of the OP, no, I wouldn’t bother to say anything.
Well, after you have completed and passed the physical fitness, firearms, defensive tactics etc… portions of the academy, then yes, the final step is to take and pass a state administered written exam.
When getting to the bottom of ethical situations, one’s judgement should not entirely depend on the details of a particular situations - the general picture as well as the background of the moral agents involved play important parts as well.
I remember when I was in university and a professor gave me a high grade I knew I didn’t deserve. I suddenly felt ashamed especially because there were fellow students present in the room and I was stupid enough to point out that the grade I had received was flattering rather than accurate. I no longer remember who the professor was, but he said that in his system grades were not merely a means to establish a hierarchy among students but also an instrument to encourage people to do their best. “Now I know you will work harder from now on to prove I was right to invest my trust in you when I gave you that grade,” he said or something like that. I don’t know whether he meant it or it was simply his way to deal with a potentially embarrassing situation but if I were allowed to resort to a metaphor to draw a conclusion I would say that ethics differs from mathematics in that all numbers (including and especially irrational ones) get ‘rounded’ so that they can be dealt with as though they were natural ones.
I’m pretty sure that most people entering the police academy have a pretty big interest in integrity and being a ‘good’ cop. Regardless of what kind of cop they end up as, by the end of their career, I’d wager they almost all start from a good place.
Not speaking up would mean you are beginning your career with something of an ethical misstep. I’m not sure that would be as simple as it sounds for a naive, bright eyed, true believer, young recruit.
I vote you own up, because otherwise you start a promising career from a compromised position. And I don’t think most recruits are ready to simply ‘look the other way’, before even leaving the academy, or getting their feet wet.
(Experienced cops, on the other hand, I suspect, would NOT hesitate to just overlook it and carry on!)
Are you sure you were wrong? I would speak up. It is, of course, another test for borderline candidates. If you speak up, they’ll congratulate you and award you the passing grade for your honesty; if you don’t, you’ll get a letter correcting the result and failing you.
In situations that can’t adversely affect others, I employ what I call, “The Vending Machine Philosophy”. If I put a dollar in the machine and TWO bottles of water come out, I have no moral problem in keeping them both because there are going to be times when I put a dollar in the machine, and NO bottle of water comes out.
In life, there are times when you’re going to have good luck and bad luck. There are times when you’re going to get a lucky break or you’re going to get the shaft. I see no reason to feel guilty about the former.
Not to fight the hypothetical or anything, but why are they still at the Academy after taking the final exam? In college, I never got final exams back to review, because they were final; the day of the final exam was the very last day of class, and often I never saw the professor again. I received my grades online a couple weeks later. There was no opportunity to alert the professor, and even if there were, the grades are posted. Even the professor couldn’t change them at that point. Maybe Police Academy is different.
Also, one question is not the difference between a worthy cop and an unworthy one. I would have no ethical qualms about taking my certification and getting a job on the force in this situation. A minor grading mistake is simply not relevant.
As a student, I had a temporary job in a prestigious London department store (Harrods :))
After my time was up, I collected my pay packet.
I noticed on the way out that they had paid me for an extra week.
I returned and pointed this out to the clerk, who asked me to wait.
A senior manager turned up, checked with the clerk and promptly offered me a full-time job, saying “We respect honest workers.”
I would approach the instructor and ask them to discuss the question with me, saying that on review I’m not as certain of my reasoning as I was before and want to confirm what the correct reasoning to get the answer was. What the instructor does with this knowledge is up to him, but I wouldn’t expect him to penalize me for my interest. (I also would expect him to be able to fail me after the fact, but that’s another matter.)
That is a badly formulated question. You introduce completly irrelevant Details, and leave out all the important context.
To avoid mixups with who “you” refers to, I will call the theoretical Person in your Scenario “Bob” (Bob the Blob to avoid the gender question).
A. How many children Bob has is irrelevant, if he lives in a modern Country. The question is not supposed to be “Should Bob work as a cop, or his children will starve?” because in modern countries Bob will get unemployment and Food stamps for his children.
So first missing context is “Why does Bob want to become a cop and not work at Walmart?”
If Bob lives in a poor Country, where the only well-paid Job is Cop, then the question is no longer about integrity, but the “Steal medicine” Dilemma.
B. In what Country is Bob living? Because if he’s in the US, he can’t Claim integrity. The current state of US Police is that it’s a rotten Organisation to the core, not just a few bad apples. Black Lives Matter has shown how often not just cops shoot civilians because they are black - but that the whole Group Closes ranks and nothing happens. The cop isn’t automatically suspended until after Trial; evidence is planted by the cop or other cops, and nothing happens when it’s discovered; cops lie in court, and nothing happens; cops are sentenced, but not fired.
If there is any Kind of selection on who not to make a cop, it’s against People with too much intelligence, not on who has the personality of a bully. There is no established Standard of Training, so even without evidence by the FBI that supremacist Groups have deliberatly infiltrated law enforcment in the US, it’s obvious by behaviour alone that bullies feel attracted to a Job where a badge protects them from consequences.
C. What Kind of cop School does Bob go to that “Integrity” is the most important part? Integrity in itself is not a value; People can have integrity to be racist jerks.
The first duty of a cop in a democratic state is to protect citizens by keeping the peace. Not protecting the established order: not protect their own lives by Shooting first; not protecting the (White) majority by Shooting (black) People first; not by dividing People into “Us Cops” and “those civilians” instead of “we citizens”.
D. What Kind of test is it - Multiple choice or Essay questions?
Essay questions are graded individually, so Points may be awarded for what Bob doesn’t see.
E. Who wrote that test? A federal board with not only cops, but also experts in law, and advocacy Groups, to test not just knowledge, but also personality of a cop (Essay questions)?
Or is it the local Sheriff, and the questions are “Write your Name, how you are related to the Sheriff, What do you think of the Job the Sheriff is doing, what’s your favourite colour?”
Is it the equivalence to the Alabama voter literacy test for one Group of Testees, and “Write your Name” for another Group?
F. How many Points? Passing by one Point out of 10 is different from one Point out of 400.
G. Who graded the test - his own instructors? Or neutral federal testers?
H. Apparently this does take place only in the US, because Bob finishes after 24 weeks, instead of 2 years Minimum.
My question was about how Bob could have studied hard for his dream Job all this time and not notice he was failing the half-year Progress tests, but in only 6 months, there might not have been Interim tests.
My conclusion is:
If Bob only got 24 weeks, supposedly studied hard because we’re supposed to believe he takes his future Job as cop serious, and yet just scrapes by with one Point, he should quit any way, regardless if this one Point was in error or not.
Scraping by with only one Point after studying hard means that Bob is not cut out for the difficult, responsible, demanding Job of a Police officer. If he values integrity, then he must look for a Job he is actually suited for - which might still be in law enforcement: there are lots of Support positions. But not as cop.
Additionally, since this is the US: Obviously this is a trap. There are too many stories out there of how People in power in the US love to screw with those under them (And get away because there is no legal protection).
Passing by only one Point, and obviously given in mistake? It’s a trap disguised as “test of character”. If Bob doesn’t speak up, they will tell him he failed the character test and he won’t get the Job anyway.
