Try your own ethics skills on the following issues.

1. You’re about to sign a $50,000 contract with a new client. The quarter ends tomorrow and you’re under pressure from the bank that holds your line of credit to produce good profits. The client is out of town and the contract isn’t signed yet. Do you include it in your quarterly report anyway?

2. Your manufacturing costs have dropped 50 percent. One customer finds out and demands a discount. A second customer doesn’t know about the discount but places the same order as the first customer. Do you give the second customer a discount?

3. You’re a financial adviser to a church, which is struggling financially. But the church has a large trust fund whose donor specified that it be spent on a new organ. The board wants to borrow from the organ fund to meet current expenses. Do you allow it?

4. You’re a chiropractor and so busy that you don’t have much extra time to join groups or find other ways to meet people. Do you go out with patients on a friendship basis only?

5. You’re a self-employed consultant with no employees. The bank charges additional fees for a business account that it doesn’t charge for a personal account. Do you open the bank account for your business under your personal name?

6. You sign an agreement with a consultant to pay him a finder’s fee if you obtain a contract from one of his business referrals, but then one of your assistants actually signs the contract. Do you pay the referral fee to the consultant?

7. Have you ever lied to a customer or a vendor?

8. Have you ever charged personal expenses on your income tax return?

Don’t look here for the “right” answers. Look at your core operating values and code of ethics.