WGU C206 Task 2 Guide: Ethics Audit, Ethical Dilemmas, and Training Program Design

WGU C206 Task 2 Guide: Ethics Audit, Ethical Dilemmas, and Training Program Design

A publicly held toy company, a board that wants answers, and four different leadership skills hiding inside one report.

Executive Summary

C206 Task 2 (assessment code EHM2) asks you to step into the role of a business manager conducting an ethics audit for a fictional company, then use what you find to justify whether ethics training is needed. Underneath the report format, four distinct leadership skills are being tested: understanding corporate social responsibility toward different stakeholders, reflecting on why ethical culture matters, applying an ethical decision-making framework to a real dilemma, and designing a training program that would actually work. Treat this as four connected mini-assignments, not one long essay, and it becomes far more manageable.

Assignment: C206 – EHM2 Task 2 Developing Organizational Ethics And Socially Responsible Behavior

Introduction

As an organizational leader, one of your primary roles is establishing programs and policies that ensure the organization operates under ethical considerations and legal mandates. This responsibility includes informing employees of the organization’s code of ethics, communicating the code of ethics, providing training, and ensuring that operational aspects are administered in a legal and ethical manner.

You will assume the role of a leader and decide what strategies you will use to develop a strong organizational ethical climate. In your position as a leader, you will need to identify primary and secondary stakeholders and satisfy their concerns, understand the organization’s ethical standing, and develop an ethics training program.

Scenario

You are a business manager of Paradigm Toys, a fictional publicly held company that is a retailer and manufacturer of children’s toys. The board of directors has asked you to conduct an ethics audit of the company and report to the board if you find the need for ethics training.

Requirements

Your submission must represent your original work and understanding of the course material. Most performance assessment submissions are automatically scanned through the WGU similarity checker. Students are strongly encouraged to wait for the similarity report to generate after uploading their work and then review it to ensure Academic Authenticity guidelines are met before submitting the file for evaluation. See Understanding Similarity Reports for more information.

Grammarly Note:

Professional Communication will be automatically assessed through Grammarly for Education in most performance assessments before a student submits work for evaluation. Students are strongly encouraged to review the Grammarly for Education feedback prior to submitting work for evaluation, as the overall submission will not pass without this aspect passing. See Use Grammarly for Education Effectively for more information.

Microsoft Files Note:

Write your paper in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) unless another Microsoft product, or pdf, is specified in the task directions. Tasks may notbe submitted as cloud links, such as links to Google Docs, Google Slides, OneDrive, etc. All supporting documentation, such as screenshots and proof of experience, should be collected in a pdf file and submitted separately from the main file. For more information, please see Computer System and Technology Requirements.

You must use the rubric to direct the creation of your submission because it provides detailed criteria that will be used to evaluate your work. Each requirement below may be evaluated by more than one rubric aspect. The rubric aspect titles may contain hyperlinks to relevant portions of the course.

Understanding the Assignment

You’re asked to conduct an ethics audit for a fictional company and report your findings to its board — specifically, whether the company needs ethics training. The report has four functional parts: a CSR analysis identifying who the company owes ethical responsibility to and how; a reflection on why ethical culture and ethics audits matter; a demonstration of your own ethical decision-making process applied to a real dilemma; and a concrete training program proposal.

Why WGU Uses This Assignment

Ethics failures at real companies rarely come from leaders who wake up intending to do harm. They come from leaders who never built the structures — audits, training, clear frameworks — that catch ethical drift before it becomes a scandal. This assessment tests whether you can build those structures, not just recognize unethical behavior after the fact.

Before You Begin

• Read the full scenario and identify the company’s industry and public status — both affect which stakeholders and risks are most relevant
• Note the specific instruction that your ethical dilemma for Part C cannot be the same dilemma used in Task 1 — pick something genuinely new
• Review all six rubric sections before writing, since several build on each other (your Part C dilemma should feel consistent with the CSR and culture points made in Parts A and B)
• Decide on your ethical decision-making framework (a specific ethical theory) before drafting Part C, not while you’re in the middle of it

Key Business Concepts

What Is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)?

CSR is an organization’s responsibility to operate in a way that accounts for its impact on the people and groups affected by it, not just its shareholders. For a deeper breakdown of the CSR framework this task draws on, see our Understanding Corporate Social Responsibility explainer.

Primary vs. Secondary Stakeholders

Primary stakeholders are directly and significantly affected by the organization’s decisions and are essential to its ongoing operation — employees, customers, shareholders. Secondary stakeholders are affected by or interested in the organization’s actions but aren’t essential to its direct operation — the local community, advocacy groups, media, regulators. Both matter; the distinction is about directness of impact and operational necessity, not about which one is “more important.”

Ethical Culture

An ethical culture is the set of shared norms, expectations, and unspoken rules that shape how people in an organization actually behave when no one’s watching closely — distinct from the values stated in an official code of ethics, which can exist on paper without being reflected in daily practice.

Ethics Audits

An ethics audit is a systematic review of an organization’s practices, policies, and culture against its stated ethical standards — designed to surface gaps between what the organization says it values and what it actually does, before those gaps become public failures.

Ethical Decision-Making Frameworks

Applying a named ethical theory — rather than just personal instinct — to a dilemma makes your reasoning traceable and defensible. If you haven’t already, our Virtue Ethics vs. Utilitarianism vs. Principle-Based Ethics explainer breaks down the three most commonly used frameworks and when each applies.

Breaking Down Every Requirement

Part A — CSR and Stakeholders

A: Purpose of CSR. State what CSR is for in general, then ground it in why it matters for a publicly held, consumer-facing company specifically — public companies face reputational and shareholder scrutiny that private companies don’t.

A1: Identify one primary and one secondary stakeholder. Pick stakeholders whose interests could plausibly create tension with each other or with the company — that tension is what makes A2 easy to write well. A stakeholder pair with no real tension between them produces a thin analysis.

A2: Analyze how the company can meet CSR for both. This needs to be genuinely distinct for each stakeholder, not one generic CSR statement applied twice. Name a specific action tied to each stakeholder’s specific interest.

Part B — Ethical Culture and Ethics Audits

B1: Why ethical culture matters. Connect this to real organizational outcomes — trust, risk reduction, employee retention — not just “it’s the right thing to do,” which won’t satisfy the rubric’s request for well-supported reasoning.

B1a: Leadership’s role in fostering it. Be specific about what leaders actually do — modeling behavior, setting policy, responding to violations consistently — not a vague “leaders should be ethical” statement.

B2: Purpose of an ethics audit. Define it functionally: what does an audit actually check, and why does that checking matter.

B2a: Value an audit brings to this specific company. Tie the value explicitly to the company’s specific situation (public status, consumer-facing, manufacturing operations) rather than a generic “audits are valuable” statement.

Part C — Ethical Dilemma and Framework

C1: Identify and analyze a dilemma — a new one, not Task 1’s. A strong dilemma has genuine competing interests where reasonable people could disagree, not an obvious right-and-wrong scenario.

C2: Evaluate two potential solutions. Both solutions need real evaluation — strengths and weaknesses — not one obviously-better option and one strawman.

C3: Explain which is more ethical, and why. This is where naming your ethical framework explicitly (utilitarian, principle-based, virtue-based) makes your reasoning traceable rather than just asserted.

Part D — Training Program Proposal

D1: Three key topics. Pick topics that connect back to gaps your audit or dilemma analysis actually surfaced — a training program that seems disconnected from the rest of your report reads as an afterthought.

D1a: Why each topic. Tie each one to a specific, named risk or gap, not a generic “this is important for all employees” statement.

D2: Delivery method, justified. Common options include in-person workshops, e-learning modules, blended approaches, or scenario-based simulations — the justification should reference this specific company’s size, structure, or workforce, not just assert that one method is “most effective” in general.

Parts E & F — Sources and Professional Communication

Same mechanics as every WGU performance assessment: complete in-text citations and a matching reference list for E, and a clean pass through Grammarly for Education for F — don’t submit before reviewing that feedback.

A Full Walkthrough (Fictitious Company)

To demonstrate the method without touching the real Paradigm Toys scenario, here’s a walkthrough using Northfield Ergonomics — the same fictitious company from our C206 Task 1 guide, now facing an ethics audit of its own.

A1/A2 — Stakeholders: Primary stakeholder: employees on the manufacturing floor, whose interest is safe working conditions and fair scheduling.

Secondary stakeholder: the local community, whose interest is environmental impact from the manufacturing facility. CSR response for employees: implementing a transparent, published safety-incident reporting process. CSR response for the community: publishing an annual environmental impact report with specific emissions and waste data, not just a general sustainability statement.

B1/B1a — Ethical culture: Northfield’s leadership can foster ethical culture by consistently enforcing safety standards even when it slows production, and by creating a reporting channel employees actually trust — culture is built more by what leadership does under pressure than by what’s written in a handbook.

C1/C2/C3 — Ethical dilemma (new, distinct from a Task 1 supplier issue): Northfield’s marketing team wants to advertise the Aria chair as “sustainably manufactured” based on the new supplier’s recycled materials — but the facility’s own emissions data hasn’t improved enough to fully justify the claim without qualification.

Two solutions: (1) Use the “sustainably manufactured” claim as planned, since the recycled materials are factually accurate. (2) Qualify the claim specifically — “made with recycled materials” rather than the broader “sustainably manufactured” — until facility-wide emissions data supports the fuller claim.

More ethical choice: Solution 2, evaluated through a principle-based framework — the duty of honest representation to the customer outweighs the marketing advantage of the broader claim, especially since an overstated claim risks a larger credibility loss if the gap is ever publicly scrutinized.

D1/D1a/D2 — Training program: Based on the gaps this audit surfaced, three topics: (1) accurate marketing claims and substantiation standards, directly tied to the dilemma above; (2) safety incident reporting procedures, tied to the employee CSR gap; (3) environmental data transparency practices, tied to the community CSR gap. Delivery method: a blended approach — a short in-person workshop for marketing and communications staff (where nuanced judgment calls need discussion) paired with a mandatory e-learning module for all staff on safety reporting (where consistency matters more than discussion).

Common Mistakes

• Picking two stakeholders with no real tension between their interests, making Part A2 thin
• Writing about ethical culture in the abstract without connecting it to this company’s specific situation
• Choosing an ethical dilemma with an obvious right answer, which makes Part C2’s two-solution evaluation weak
• Reusing Task 1’s dilemma, which the rubric explicitly disallows
• A training program that doesn’t connect back to anything the audit actually found
• Justifying a delivery method with “it’s effective” instead of a reason tied to this company

Self-Assessment Checklist

• Do my primary and secondary stakeholders have genuinely different interests?
• Is my CSR response for each stakeholder specific, not a repeated generic statement?
• Have I named a specific ethical framework in Part C3, not just an unlabeled opinion?
• Is my Part C dilemma different from my Task 1 dilemma?
• Do my three training topics each trace back to something my audit actually surfaced?
• Have I justified my delivery method with a reason specific to this company?

References & Further Reading

• Hu, Y., Yang, Y., & Lee, P. K. C. (2022). Effective Practices for Improving Service Professionals’ Ethical Behaviors: A Multiple Method Study. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. — A peer-reviewed study identifying practical, effective approaches to improving ethical behavior in service organizations, informing this guide’s emphasis on tying training topics to specific, identified gaps rather than generic content.
• For CSR framework grounding, see the citations in our Understanding Corporate Social Responsibility explainer; for ethical decision-making theory, see the citations in our Virtue Ethics vs. Utilitarianism vs. Principle-Based Ethics explainer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can my ethical dilemma be related to my Task 1 dilemma, just not identical? The rubric specifically disallows submitting Task 1’s example as your Part C response — choose a genuinely different dilemma to be safe, even if it’s thematically related.

How do I pick which ethical framework to use in Part C3? Choose whichever framework gives you the clearest, most defensible argument for the specific dilemma — a broken promise or public claim often fits principle-based reasoning well; a resource tradeoff often fits utilitarian reasoning better.

Does my ethics training program need a budget or timeline? The rubric doesn’t require one, but naming a realistic scope (who attends, roughly how long) often strengthens D2’s justification even without being explicitly required.

Is Paradigm Toys a real company? No — it’s WGU’s fictional teaching scenario for this course, and it’s shared across every student completing this task.

Is getting help with this task against WGU’s academic integrity policy? Tutoring, coaching, and editing support are a normal, accepted part of studying — most university policies explicitly support students getting this kind of help.

Related Learning Resources

• WGU C206 Task 1 Guide: Communication Portfolio
• Understanding Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
• Virtue Ethics vs. Utilitarianism vs. Principle-Based Ethics
• Stakeholder Analysis
• Understanding Bias in the Workplace
• Executive Communication

Need Help Understanding C206 Task 2?

Conducting an ethics audit and building a training proposal is a lot to structure well, especially when you’re balancing work, family, and school. If you’re unsure how to pick stakeholders with real tension, apply an ethical framework, or connect your training program back to your audit findings, an Assignment Clarity Session walks through it with you directly.