Is Integrity A Good Reputation - 1249 Words

Anyone who has been to first grade or a Sunday-school class knows that integrity is â€Å"doing the right thing when nobody else is watching.† It is a simple explanation for a supremely important and difficult to define concept. Integrity is not something that comes naturally to everyone, but it is one of the most valuable attributes that others can perceive in you. If you break the trust created by having integrity, just like a good reputation, it will take a long time to rebuild it to a serviceable level. The adage above is simple and easily understood, but it does not fully explain the concept of integrity. Let us look at a couple of case studies we discussed this semester and see if we are able to craft a better and more refined†¦show more content†¦In the interviews we watched with him he appeared calm and content with his situation. He knew he made a mistake and he owned up to it. It was a tragic error yes, and he knows that, but he also knew that it coul d have happened to anyone else in his place and he owned it. He ultimately lost his license to practice engineering and his firm suffered severe economic penalties, but he did not refuse to accept it. He owned his error and he earned my respect for it. Jumping forward quite a bit in the semester we come to the case of the BP oil spill and the fate of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig was exploring a potential oil well far out in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 when several problems occurred and the rig ultimately exploded, and the well at the ocean floor failed and began spilling millions of barrel of oil into the Gulf, causing large scale ecological and economical damage to the states on the Gulf. The BP oil spill was the result of â€Å"gross negligence† according to a federal judge and many warning signs went unseen or unacted upon. The drilling of underwater oil and gas wells is by no means an exact science, but BP and the contractors carrying out the work ignored several red flags and excused those they did not outright disregard. The two most implicating points, from an integrity point of view that is, are these: †¢ BP went back and changed some initial design