Nine quick situations before you read anything, ungraded, for your own baseline. Each asks you to apply a framework to a live decision, not recite a definition. You'll face the same nine again at the Review stage, and the difference is yours to see.

1. 1.A streaming app adds autoplay and average watch time jumps 20%. Before a consequentialist calls that a good outcome, what still has to go on the ledger?

   Whether the product team intended to help viewers or only to lift a metricWhether a manager of good character would have signed off on shipping itThe dispersed costs: users' lost sleep, attention, and time

2. 2.Switching to a cheaper single-use package lifts margin by four points. What does the triple bottom line ask before approving the switch?

   Whether the switch stays inside every packaging and labeling regulation the company facesWhether the gain survives the social and environmental ledgers, not just the financial oneWhether competitors have already made the same switch and kept their customers

3. 3.An airline oversells every flight. Revenue rises and most travelers still get seats; a few get bumped each week. Why can a utilitarian sum make this look better than it may be?

   Summed gains for the many can hide the concentrated harm on the bumped fewThe airline's intent was profit, and profit-seeking is unethical on its faceOverselling breaks the promise printed on the ticket, whatever the totals say

4. 4.A sales rep considers telling wavering customers a discount 'ends tonight' when it does not. What does the categorical imperative say?

   If the tactic earns more than it costs in refunds, complaints, and lost repeat business over the following year, it passesUniversalized, 'mislead customers whenever it closes a sale' turns claimed deadlines into noise: the rule defeats itself, so it is ruled outIf most reps across the industry already lean on the same closing line, it passes as ordinary accepted practice

5. 5.A lender buries a recurring fee where few borrowers will ever find it. Which objection is the intentionalist one?

   It violates the borrower's right to understand what they are agreeing to, whatever it earnsThe fee income will be outweighed by churn and complaints once word finally spreadsA prudent banker would never risk her own hard-won reputation on a buried recurring line item

6. 6.A team can ship a product with a known but perfectly legal defect. What does the duty-based lens say about 'it's legal'?

   Full legal compliance is the entire measure of a company's ethical obligation to its buyersLegality matters only to the degree that regulators are likely to notice the defectLaw is the floor, not the verdict: a legal act can still break a real duty to the buyer

7. 7.'The owners just want returns,' says a manager, green-lighting a risk the clients were never told about. What is the agency-theory reply?

   Whatever maximizes total welfare across everyone the decision touches is automatically inside the mandateThe mandate binds the agent to the owners' interests, but it licenses only what informed principals would endorseAn agent's only real duty in the end is to their own career, compensation, and standing with the owners

8. 8.A manager finds an expense trick that no audit would ever detect. Why does virtue ethics still object?

   Character is a settled habit, not a clean record: doing it makes her someone who pads expensesThe expected penalty, discounted by the slim odds of detection, still outweighs the expected gainCompany policy forbids the trick, and policy exists precisely to be followed

9. 9.An account manager's role says push the campaign; his own judgment says its claims oversell. What is the agent-centered question?

   Whether the campaign's added reach and revenue outweigh the realistic risk of complaintsWhether every claim stays technically inside the lines of current advertising lawWhether he can run it and remain honest in his own eyes: a role does not suspend character