You are the Chief Procurement Officer for Terebro Energy Co$.$ You are responsible for managing the acquisition of raw materials and other goods or services the company needs. Terebro$$s emerging strategy to refocus on wind and solar energy$$and the company$$s new commitment to a carbon$-$neutral supply chain$$have completely upended your routine. Your team is currently scrambling to find new suppliers for almost every aspect of Terebro$$s operations. And, since Terebro is an energy company with global reach, the project is massive.

A particularly time$-$consuming task is the supplier quality audits, where Terebro thoroughly reviews the operations and product quality of suppliers to identify problems. Terebro$$s usual process involves reviews from an internal audit team, which helps narrow down the choice of suppliers before a contract is signed and conducts regular reviews of existing suppliers every two years. Terebro also conducts an independent third$-$party audit as a final step before entering into any agreement with a new supplier. These audits ensure Terebro avoids buying inferior goods or working with poorly managed companies. In the worst examples along a global supply chain, a supplier might be responsible for environmental devastation, unsafe worker conditions, or the use of underpaid or forced labor.

Mateo and Lily, two procurement managers you supervise, are meeting with you to discuss their concerns about Terebro$$s restructuring of the supply chain. In keeping with the hurried pace, the meeting is over lunch: the only open time that aligns with all your schedules.

$$First of all, I know we$$re behind schedule,$$ Mateo says. $$We$$ve hit some snags, though Lily and I are hoping our suggestion could speed our process up and get us back on track.$$

$$Normally$,$ Lily says, $$we$$re only looking to fill one or two new procurement needs at any given time. The rest of the work is managing existing contracts. But now that we$$re on the hunt for new materials$$recycled steel to lower our carbon footprint, polysilicon for our solar panels, all that$$the bottleneck we$$re encountering is in the audit process. We$$re just not built to look for this many new suppliers at once.$$

$$Right$,$ Mateo agrees. $$Our internal auditors are swamped. Site inspections, quality assessment, interviews, reports, and on and on$.$ What Lily and I recommend is that we focus more on locking down purchasing agreements and schedule the internal and third$-$party audits at a more reasonable pace. And, in the worst case, we can always end our deals later if we find problems.$$

$$It$$s a risk,$$ Lily admits, $$because we might end up working with a few bad partners for a while, maybe even a year or two, until we can go down the list and review them all. But the advantage is we$$ll get up and running much faster$$giving all of us a much$-$needed break.$$

Examining an ethical dilemma requires first identifying the ethical issue, which is a tension between competing values. These tensions may be between the individual and the larger group $($autonomy vs$.$ equality$),$ or a tension between logic and emotion $($rationality vs$.$ sensibility$).$ On the other hand, some problems that appear to be ethical dilemmas have no value tension at all. These are instead technical problems$$a question about the best way to accomplish something or about arriving at an objectively correct solution.