Notwithstanding the potential limitations of
self-report data, the method of providing anonymous
self reports is still an essential methodological
tool for ethics research on several counts. To
begin with, ethics research addresses highly sensitive
topics. Given the moral and social opprobrium
attached to unethical business practices, as
well as the likely loss of employment when such
practices are discovered, it is highly unlikely that
any researcher will be able to definitively observe
unethical practices directly in field studies. Moreover,
while survey data limits our analysis to the