ABSTRACT
Susan, a senior student in capstone class, presented her professors and classmates with this dilemma. She had been accepted into three graduate schools but hoped to attend the one that offered the best package of financial aid, assistantships, or stipends. Susan's dilemma, as well as the issue facing the student in the job interview, raises issues of communication ethics. By an ethical issue, we mean just this sort of case, in which one can raise a question about whether a particular communication behavior is right or wrong. The first four types of systems for reasoning about communication ethics involve issues based on the following broad concepts: character, duties, consequences and relationships. Communication ethics is the application of ethical thinking to situations involving human communication. A word that represents what we mean by communication ethics is integrity. One of the main characteristics many people say they look for in a leader is integrity.
