Samuel Mulbah is operations manager for a local office of a top ranked full-service brokerage firm. With increasing competition from both discount and online brokers, Samuel’s firm has redirected attention to attaining exceptional customer service through its client-facing staff, namely brokers. In particular, management wished to emphasize the excellent advisory services provided by its brokers.
Results from surveying clients about the advice received from brokers at the local office revealed that 20% rated it poor, 5% rated it below average, 15% rated it average, 10% rated it above average, and 50% rated it outstanding. With corporate approvals. Samuel and his management team instituted several changes in an effort to provide the best possible advisory services at the local office. Their goal was to increase the percentage of clients who viewed their advisory services as outstanding survey conducted after changes were implemented showed the following results: 5% below average, 20% average, 40% above average and 30% outstanding. In discussing these results, the management team expressed concened that the percentage of clients who considered their advisory services outstanding fell from 50% to 30% one member of the team suggest an alternative way of summaring the date. By coding the categories on a scale from 1=poor to 5=outstanding and computing the average they found that the average rating increased from 3.65 to 3.85 as a result of the changes implemented Jim was delighted to see that their changes were successful in improving the level of advisory services offered at the local office In his report to corporate, he only included average ratings for the client surveys.
Identify the ethical dilemma in this scenario
What are the undesirable consequences?
Propose an ethical solution that considers the welfare of all stakeholders.