Margaret is the manager of the Housing Loan Services of Tennessee. She has worked in the organization for 10 years and has 15 employees in her department. The work hours in the department are 8:00am - 5:00pm, Monday - Friday. Employees may be tasked with working weekends if additional help is needed.

Margaret has asked her employees to work on the project of processing loan applications for low-income homeowners who have received federal aid from Hurricane Kyle. All employees have been assigned specific tasks and provided instructions for completing the loan application to meet the deadline required for reimbursement for federal aid. In addition, employees have been instructed to not discuss the specifics of the project due to client confidentiality.

During the employee's lunch break, an employee overheard two other employees talking about her cousin who was on the list to have her mortgage loan processed. She mentioned that her cousin needed to have her loan processed within the next 2 weeks or she would incur a higher interest rate or be required to requalify for a new loan. Hearing this conversation and understanding the policy on ethical responsibility in the workplace, the employees are faced with a dilemma on how they should handle the situation.

After the meeting:

Margaret has met with your team to discuss the unethical issue and conflict that has occurred with the employee. As a result, the dynamics of your group has changed quite a bit, as some employees are not working together in a cohesive manner needed to complete project. Some employees have not been putting forth the effort to complete their part of the project. Other employees have had to put in more than their share of the work and are required to work weekends to complete the project.

Using the scenario presented above, expand on ways you would strengthen your group's relationship by outlining the following:

describe the unethical issue(s) you found in this scenario and the conflict created as a result of the issue.

Unethical Issue:

Conflict created: