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A Sit Down Conversion With My Company Officer

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In a sit down conversion with my company officer, we discussed the importance of the competing tensions and loyalties presented in the case study. As junior officers in the Navy or Marine Corps team, we are going to be responsible for and expected to upkeep equipment that could range up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. To be responsible for that equipment would mean that it is my divisions, and ultimately my own, responsibility to maintain and upkeep that equipment in the finest condition possible—it is being ready on a moment’s notice that preserves the loyalties I owe to the mission of the Navy and the American people. To be ill prepared or not prepared at all is ultimately disloyal. During the discussion, we concluded that …show more content…

After all, Chief has apparently been doing this for some number of years—he knows what he is talking about, right? However, by conforming to what Chief is suggesting—by allowing these false maintenance records—I put my division at risk. What if, because of faulty equipment that was supposedly in working order, someone got hurt? Not only is the division’s credibility on the line, but someone must take responsibility for the falsified document—that responsibility falls on the division officer.
In addition to the loss of ship’s trust in the division, there are a slew of reasons not to adhere to Chief’s suggestion. This type of maintenance and these big inspections are not trivial; they are known about long before they happen. If Chief’s action is allowed to go unquestioned, it sets the precedence for future inspections. If the division officer allows jobs to be falsified now, who is to say he would not allow the same in the future—it is a snowball effect. One skipped maintenance leads to two, which leads to three, and so on and so forth. At the end of the day the enlisted sailors know the job did not get done, yet the division passed the inspection. This allows the sailors to judge and presume certain aspects of their division officer’s character and integrity.
The conflicts presented in this case study can be broken down and analyzed using virtue ethics. In class and in the readings, virtue is described as an internal settled conflict that allows us to

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