Isabelle Jensen

Arizona State University

Course Reflection Paper

I learned more than I ever imagined I would learn in this class about ethics. It is very

important to know, especially in a leadership position, what is ethically right and wrong. The

Fryer textbook, moral minefield simulation, and case study paper have helped me tremendously

in learning about different ethical dilemmas and what the right course of action would be in that

situation. It is hard to read a textbook about what is ethically right and then apply that lesson to

your everyday life and work, this is why finding real case studies and going through simulations

can be extremely beneficial to ethics learning.

This term was my first time reading the Fryer textbook, as well as using Perusall. I very

much enjoyed Perusall, especially in an ethics class, because of the discussions I got to have with

my classmates. Ethics is a topic where a classroom discussion about a particular ethical dilemma

can be fun and intriguing, making these discussions on Perusall feel close to that. Reading a

textbook is not one of my favorite things to do, but participating in these class discussions and

creating annotations gave me the motivation I needed to read through each chapter carefully and

intently.

The one thing I learned from our textbook that surprised me the most were the amount of

ethical theories there are and how different they are from each other. I had only taken one

previous ethics class in college, so I wasn’t quite sure of all the aspects that goes into ethics.

These many ethical theories really helped me develop a new knowledge of ethics and how to

determine if something is truly ethically right or wrong. If I learned anything, it’s that no

situation is the same, and it could be ethically right according to one theory, but wrong according

to another one. This is the main reason why ethics is so complex and many ethical dilemmas can

be hard to sort out.

 Isabelle Jensen
Arizona State University
My favorite part of this class was the Moral Minefield simulation. The simulation was

harder than I expected. Many of the questions seem straight forward or ‘easy’ but then it would

turn out that I got the answer wrong. The simulation taught me to slow down and fully think

through the situation at hand before making a decision. Many times, we are so use to being on

auto-pilot about what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, that we forget to think about it in a different context.

The biggest lesson this game taught me, however, is that while I may not think something is

‘right’, it isn’t unethical and therefore doesn’t call for much action to be taken. Sometimes it can

be hard to separate your personal feelings about a situation from the ethicality of it.

I found the case study research paper fundamental to wrapping up my ethical knowledge

in this class. After taking all that I had learned from the textbook and simulations, I got to bring

that knowledge to real life ethical dilemmas and pick them apart to discover what was unethical

about them. Not only did I enjoy finding unethical problems, but I found some truly interesting

stories with issues we are still facing today. One ethical case study I chose was about the two

men getting kicked out of a Philadelphia Starbucks store for being black. I had heard about this

story on the news previously, but I didn’t understand the situation in its entirety so I was excited

to read more about the events that took place.

I feel as though my leadership style has changed over the past semester because of the

new knowledge I am coming out of this course with. Before I took this course, I was often

making decisions based on personal preference, or personal opinion on what the right thing to do

is. However, I will now make decisions in leadership keeping in mind that I must leave my

personal feelings out of it. There is so much more to a situation than you can see sometimes, and

this is why ethics forces you to look at the whole picture and dive deep into intentions before

making any rash decisions. I plan on using these new ways of thinking not only in my future
 Isabelle Jensen
Arizona State University
career, but also in my personal life. I think that ethics can help someone through decision making

in all aspects of life when they may not be sure what the right thing to do is.

Overall, I really have enjoyed this course and the lessons that came with it. I felt as

though each assignment was essential to the learning of ethics and how it can be applied to

everyday life. I am excited to share my new findings with others and recommend them to taking

ethics classes just like this one as I feel it could help anyone, no matter what field they work in.