Conclusion

There are many situations where no one is watching, or there seem to be no immediate consequences, where professionals must choose to do either the ethical thing or the unethical thing. As we have already discussed, we do what we practice, and we become what we do. Research into understanding the ethical development of professionals frequently begins with understanding the ethical training and practice of post-secondary students training for such professions with the assumption that those students who operate unethically during their education have a higher likelihood of operating unethically in their professional careers, because they have not exercised the skill of operating ethically in the easier and lower stakes setting of education (McCabe et al, 2001). Choosing to act with academic integrity then becomes a question of “Who do you want to be?” Just like practicing learning the language used in the discourse community of your chosen profession, choosing to do the ethical thing, even when the other option seems easier, is a long-term choice to build the habits of ethical behavior and the skill set of handling the hard things necessary to be an ethical professional within that same discourse community. It can also influence other students to act with integrity and help shift the culture if more students expected their colleagues to act ethically. So, when you choose what you are going to do in these difficult situations, you are choosing your identity and influencing the culture of your educational program

In response to this student’s query, I wrote an email explaining how the integrity pledge is a form of an honor code to ensure students acknowledge that the exam is intended to be a solo exercise testing your individual skills and not a group effort. In addition, I clarified that in an exam situation, consulting with colleagues for answers on an exam intended to test individual abilities is not “collaborating,” it is cheating and academic misconduct under university policies. Even though we were in a situation in which faculty may not be able to enforce this or enact consequences all the time, I explained that if a student chooses to continue this behavior when expressly asked not to, they need to be aware that they are making a clear choice to act unethically, which is not entirely without consequences. These consequences are to one’s identity.