MacDonald’s post raises the problem on AI doing essays for students to submit their work they ultimately didn’t do. The Markkula Center’s “Thinking Ethically” helps turn that headline into a clear response. First, get the facts: who’s affected and how? Stakeholders include the student who cheats, honest classmates, teachers, schools, and the companies selling AI writing. Next, test policies through multiple lenses. The right and justice that every student gets a fair chance when submitting work for grading. Students shouldn’t be able to use AI to do all of their work, because then the whole grading system gets messed up, and it cheats out the other students who do their work themselves. Virtue: Honesty and courage matter. Own your process and ask for help if you’re stuck. Common good: normalizing ghostwritten work harms the learning community. Put side-by-side, the blog post alerts us to the risk, while Markkula shows how to design rules that are fair and workable. A balanced policy could allow transparent, limited AI support (brainstorming, grammar checks) with clear citation while banning AI-ghostwritten submissions. That respects some autonomy and usefulness but protects justice and the common good. Reading both texts together turns a hot topic into a practical classroom standard that is easy to explain and defend. Both texts display the fact that students should learn the right way and be able to do their own work and research the right way. Not taking the easy route out and cheating with AI-generated responses. 

Sources 

Corporate A.I. Helping Students Cheat?

https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/thinking-ethically

Four different popular frameworks for evaluating difficult decisions are described in the Science Learning Hub article: autonomy, consequentialism, virtue ethics, and rights and responsibilities. Additionally, it states that while there won’t always be a single right response, more insightful answers result from rigorous reasoning within a well-defined framework. The Markkula Center’s “Thinking Ethically” program has a direct connection to this. It begins with the process step of “get the facts” and then applies ethical lenses such as rights, justice, utilitarianism, virtue, and the common good. When combined, the two sources provide a method as well as a map. Markkula explains the first steps: take your time, collect information, make a list of interested parties, and determine your options. After that, Science Learning Hub provides a simple, four-part checklist for comparing those choices. Are people’s rights upheld? Do advantages outweigh disadvantages? Is there protection for autonomy? Do the behaviors align with fundamental values such as patience and honesty? The two texts’ overlap is significant because they both caution against pursuing a single “perfect” rule and instead advocate for open reasoning and common standards. That common criterion helps a group or class maintain fair and focused discussions. To put it briefly, the Science Learning Hub provides a basic set of lenses that most people can recall under pressure, while Markkula establishes the steps. Ethical decisions are more consistent and simpler to communicate to others when both are used.

Sources: https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/2146-frameworks-for-ethical-analysis

https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/a-framework-for-ethical-decision-making

The article’s focus on action connects with several things we’ve read. It matches the idea of “behavioral integrity,” which says people trust leaders when words match deeds. It also links to psychological safety research: when teams agree on norms, people know how to speak up without fear. The piece also lines up with SMART goals. Values are effective when they’re specific (named habits), measurable (we can confirm that they did happen), achievable (simple habits), relevant (aligned with our work), and time-bound (weekly habits). Another overlap is conflict management. Conflicts don’t tend to occur around the task; conflicts occur around values. One person cares about speed, another cares about quality. If we name and balance those early on, we avoid blow-ups later on. Reading this also reminded me of ethics case studies we did. In them, tragedies almost always began with unclear or ignored values. By codifying values as everyday habits, groups make it harder to get trapped into shortcuts. Unlike books that possess values in the mission-statement level, this article offers step-by-step recommendations: share your values, agree on team values, develop a simple credo, and keep revisiting it. That actual ladder makes the concept practical, not just inspirational.

Source: https://community.mis.temple.edu/mis0855002fall2015/files/2015/10/S.M.A.R.T-Way-Management-Review.pdf

This piece connects to other things we’ve studied about teams. It lines up with Tuckman’s stages (Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing). Many groups get stuck in Storming because people argue from different, hidden values. One person cares most about speed, another about accuracy, and another about fairness. The article’s advice, surface personal values, then agree on team values, helps move a group into Norming faster. It also reminds me of leadership ethics we previously studied: real ethics show up in everyday decisions, not just in eloquent speeches. When leaders encourage others to co-create norms, people commit. That jibes with what we studied about participatory leadership and psychological safety. The reading also fits in with goal-setting theory. Goals are most effective when they are concrete and linked to action. Values work the same way. When we say “communication,” we should specify what that is: timely responses, short subject lines, agendas for meetings, and summary statements. And finally, I see a connection with accountability models like “more of/less of.” The article suggests turning values into actions. That’s similar to the performance checklists we discussed: the things we want to do more of (early updates, honest feedback) and less of (ghosting, surprise last-minute events). Compared to some books that define values generally, this one is an applied book. It forces teams to write, choose, and perform on values every week, not just at launch. That difference, action instead of posters, sets it apart in a positive way.

Source: https://hbr.org/2002/07/make-your-values-mean-something

When reading “Why Ethical People make Unethical Choices” it reminded me of the Houston Astros sign-stealing scandal and the Wells Fargo fake-accounts case. In both cases people didn’t start out trying to be dishonest. They were pushed by intense goal win a title, hit aggressive sales number and by a culture that praised results over how those results were earned. That matches Carucci’s point rules on paper don’t matter if daily incentives and messages reward cutting corners. The similarities are obvious. There was groupthink, the feeling that everyone else is doing it, and the idea that small steps weren’t really harmful. Jobs were split up so no one person felt fully responsible, which made it easier to rationalize bad choices. The differences show up in the fallout. The article gives general warning signs, but the real cases reveal the cost, championships questioned, customers harmed, fines, lost jobs, and long-term damage to trust. Both examples also show how silence protects the problem. People feared speaking up because it might hurt the team or their careers. For my leadership, the lesson is practical: set goals that can be hit the right way, make the how as visible as the what and open clear, safe channels to report pressure or conflicts. If honesty slows performance sometimes that’s a tradeoff worth making, because trust once broken is incredibly hard to rebuild. It also proves that culture design is an ethical decision not decoration only.

Carucci, Ron. “Why Ethical People Make Unethical Choices.” Harvard Business Review (2016): “Clearly it takes more than a compliance policy to sustain a truly ethical workplace.”