ABSTRACT. Each of the simulations of ethics and communication present potentially no-win situations to the student and contain the lesson that difficult situations requiring hard decisions are likely to carry a moral and ethical cost. Yet the simulations share one important attribute: At some level they are concerned with whether or not one should tell the truth. The main purpose of this reflection paper is to examine how truth issues surface in the simulations and to use those issues as a point of departure for explanation of the core values that the writer brought to the process of making decisions in the simulations and that informed evaluation of those simulations. The fundamental value is a commitment to truth, and subsidiary values flow from it, even when the potential cost to acting on them is likely to be quite high. A secondary purpose of this reflection paper is to refer to the simulations so as to articulate in some detail the constancy of the writer's value system, which is informed by a Christian ethic as well as by the lessons of life experience that have shown him that, in the last analysis, truth is always best because it cannot be hidden forever.
After reviewing the simulations and reading materials for this assignment, I cannot say that my personal values have appreciably changed. Each of the cases presented ethical dilemmas that may seem significantly different from one another and/or unique to the business world at first glance, but as a matter of fact they all come down to a choice between telling the truth or not. When I clicked through the simulations, I tried to decide in favor of being truthful to the extent possible. That may carry personal cost, but as a Christian man I do not believe that I should count the cost of a commitment to truth. That does not mean I think I should deliberately use the phrase "open and honest" as an excuse to hurt people. It does mean that where deliberate deception makes an appea...