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Choose best/worst actions in workplace ethics scenarios

GoogleSoftware Engineer · Online Assessment
MediumSoftware EngineerOnline AssessmentBehavioral & Leadership

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This question evaluates workplace ethics, confidentiality handling, conflict-of-interest recognition, anti-harassment awareness, integrity, and escalation judgment for software engineers.

You are taking a situational judgment test (SJT). For each scenario below, the test presents four possible actions. You must select:

  • Most likely / best action (what you should do)
  • Least likely / worst action (what you should not do)

Assume you are a software engineer at a large tech company. Answer based on professional ethics, confidentiality, conflict of interest rules, and respectful workplace behavior.

Scenarios

  1. You proposed what you believe are strong product/UI ideas for YouTube, but your manager did not adopt them.
  2. You are responsible for buying a company tool. A close friend’s startup sells a similar tool, and your friend’s company may fail soon without a large customer.
  3. A newly joined PM is struggling to keep up technically and is being mocked by coworkers.
  4. A friend working at a competing company that is close to bankruptcy asks you to share important customer information.
  5. During annual performance review season, you discover the company system mistakenly attributed a coworker’s achievements to you, and you are barely meeting expectations.
  6. During annual performance review season, a customer verbally promised to buy your product, and you need this deal to hit your goal.
  7. A new teammate is not fitting into the culture and is being mocked by coworkers.
  8. A customer offers you an expensive gift.
  9. Your deadline is near. A coworker asks you to use code they wrote at their previous employer (a competitor) to finish faster.
  10. You need to discuss a confidential report with a coworker, but they are on vacation and only have their personal computer.
  11. A deadline is near. You need your manager’s approval to send confidential information to a customer, but your manager is already offline.
  12. While you are at a coffee shop, your manager wants to discuss confidential information over the phone.
  13. A competing company sends you a full-time job offer while you are still employed.
  14. While traveling with a friend, they ask to borrow your work laptop to check their personal email.

What to provide

For each scenario:

  • State the best action and the worst action (even though the original test shows four options).
  • Give 2–4 sentences of reasoning referencing principles such as: protect confidential data, avoid conflicts of interest, integrity, anti-harassment, and proper escalation.