WGU C717: Business Ethics

Why Business Ethics Sits at the Heart of Your Business Degree

WGU C717, Business Ethics, is a School of Business course that trains you to recognize ethical problems in real organizations and reason through them with actual frameworks instead of gut feeling. You'll work through classic ethical theories — utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics — and then apply them to messy business situations: conflicts of interest, stakeholder trade-offs, corporate responsibility decisions, and questions about what employers and employees owe each other. Most students hit C717 partway through a business administration or management program, and it tends to arrive as a welcome change of pace: less math, more thinking and writing.

Direct answer: C717 is assessed through performance assessments — written tasks graded against a rubric — not a proctored multiple-choice exam. To pass, learn the major ethical theories well enough to apply them by name, read each task's rubric line by line before you write, and address every rubric item explicitly in your paper. Clear, complete coverage of the rubric matters more than beautiful prose.

Why does this course matter beyond the checkbox? Because ethical judgment is one of the few business skills that shows up in every role, from first-line supervisor to compliance and executive leadership. The habit C717 builds — naming the stakeholders, naming the framework, and defending a decision in writing — is exactly what you'll be asked to do at work when a situation isn't covered by policy. If you're curious how the same skill set plays out in a tech context, WGU covers parallel ground in D333 Ethics in Technology.

What C717 Actually Asks You to Do

The course is organized around a small set of core themes, and the assessments pull directly from them:

• Ethical theories and frameworks — utilitarian, deontological (duty-based), and virtue-ethics reasoning, and how each one can lead to a different conclusion about the same dilemma.
• Ethical decision-making in organizations — spotting ethical issues in business scenarios, evaluating options, and justifying a course of action.
• Stakeholder analysis — identifying who is affected by a business decision (employees, customers, shareholders, communities, regulators) and weighing their competing interests.
• Corporate and social responsibility — what companies owe society beyond profit, and how those commitments translate into concrete initiatives.
• Employees' rights and responsibilities, and employer obligations — safe and non-discriminatory workplaces, whistleblower protection, confidentiality, and the duties that run in both directions.
• Organizational ethics structures — codes of conduct, ethics training, and the mechanisms companies use to encourage ethical behavior.

Instead of a proctored objective assessment, C717 uses written performance assessments. Publicly shared student materials consistently describe two rubric-graded tasks built around a company scenario: broadly, one asks you to apply ethical theory and corporate responsibility concepts to a case, and the other centers on the rights and responsibilities that employees and employers owe one another. Task versions and prompts change over time, so treat that as orientation only — the task page and rubric inside your own course are the sole authority on what you must produce. Because evaluators grade strictly against the rubric, the rubric is effectively your outline.

How Hard Is C717, Really?

By WGU business-course standards, C717 sits on the easier end for most people — with one big caveat: it's a writing course. Many students report finishing in two to four weeks, and course overview materials shared by students indicate WGU expects roughly six weeks or less. If you write comfortably and follow rubrics carefully, this can be one of the faster courses in your term. If academic writing is a weak spot, budget extra time for drafting and possible revisions.

The most common friction point isn't the difficulty of the ideas — it's returned tasks. Papers come back when a rubric item is addressed vaguely or skipped entirely, and each revision cycle adds days to your timeline. Students who pass on the first submission commonly describe the same habit: they wrote to the rubric, item by item, using the rubric's own language as section headings or topic sentences.

A realistic plan: a few days to work through the courseware and get the theories straight, then one focused week per task, including a self-review pass against the rubric before you submit.

A Writing-First Study Plan for C717

Because C717 is performance-assessed, your prep should look nothing like OA-style cramming. Here's a plan that fits how the course is actually graded:

1. Learn the theories to the point of application, not just recognition. Use active recall: for each framework (utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics), close the book and write a two-sentence definition plus one business example from memory. If you can't generate the example, you don't own the concept yet — and the tasks will ask you to apply frameworks, not define them.
2. Drill contrast cases. Take one scenario — say, a layoff decision or a product-safety trade-off — and write how a utilitarian, a deontologist, and a virtue ethicist would each analyze it. This "one case, three lenses" exercise is the highest-yield practice for this course because it mirrors what the tasks ask you to do.
3. Read the rubric before you read anything else for each task. Convert every rubric row into a heading in a blank document. Now you can't accidentally skip a requirement, and the evaluator can find each item instantly.
4. Space out your case reading. The courseware leans on real-world examples. Rather than binge-reading, spread short sessions across several days and quiz yourself on yesterday's cases before starting new material — spaced repetition works for concepts and cases alike.
5. Practice the employee–employer angle too. Write a short paragraph on a workplace right (safety, fair pay, freedom from retaliation) and the matching employer duty. It's easy to over-prepare on theory and under-prepare on this half of the course.
6. Self-grade before you submit. Put your draft next to the rubric and honestly mark each row: did I address this explicitly, with support? If any row makes you hesitate, revise that section. This one habit prevents most returned tasks.
7. Use your course instructor. WGU course instructors will clarify task requirements and point you to the right courseware sections. A ten-minute question now beats a returned task later.

For official program context and course listings, see WGU's online business degrees pages at wgu.edu.

Where C717 Papers Get Sent Back

• Describing instead of applying. Summarizing what utilitarianism is without applying it to the scenario is the classic miss. Evaluators want to see the framework doing work on the facts.
• Ignoring a stakeholder group. Analyses that only consider shareholders and customers often come back — employees, communities, and regulators usually belong in the picture too.
• Vague recommendations. "The company should give back to the community" won't satisfy a rubric. Specific, feasible actions tied to the company's actual situation will.
• Skipping rubric rows. Every rubric item must be visibly addressed. Burying two requirements inside one paragraph often reads as missing one of them.
• Overwriting. These tasks reward focused, well-organized analysis. Padding a paper to seem thorough makes rubric coverage harder to spot, not easier.
• Paraphrasing sources too closely. WGU reviews submissions for originality. Work from your own outline and cite properly — an originality problem costs far more time than writing it yourself would have.

C717 Readiness Checklist

• Can you define utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics from memory and give a business example of each?
• Can you take one ethical dilemma and analyze it three different ways, one per framework, reaching a defended conclusion?
• Can you list the major stakeholder groups for a typical company and explain how a single decision affects each differently?
• Can you explain what corporate social responsibility means and propose two specific, feasible initiatives for a company you know?
• Can you name several employee rights and the corresponding employer responsibilities, and explain why each matters ethically?
• Can you describe common parts of an organizational ethics program, such as a code of conduct and ethics training?
• Have you read every row of each task's rubric and mapped it to a section of your planned paper?
• Can you self-grade a draft against the rubric and identify which rows are weakly supported?
• Do you know how to cite sources in the format the task requires, without close paraphrasing?

FAQ

Is WGU C717 an OA or a PA?

C717 is a performance assessment (PA) course. You pass by submitting written tasks that evaluators grade against a rubric — there is no proctored objective exam. Student-shared materials consistently describe two tasks, though prompts and versions change, so confirm the current requirements on your own course page.

How long does C717 take most students?

Many students report finishing in two to four weeks, and course overview materials shared publicly indicate WGU expects roughly six weeks or less. Strong writers who work rubric-first often finish faster; if writing is a weak spot, plan for extra drafting and revision time.

Is C717 hard?

Most students describe it as one of the more manageable business courses. The concepts are approachable — the real challenge is producing organized, rubric-complete papers. Returned tasks, not difficult content, are what stretch timelines.

What ethical theories do I need to know for C717?

The core frameworks are utilitarianism, deontology (duty-based ethics), and virtue ethics. You need them at the application level: given a business scenario, you should be able to analyze it through each lens and explain how the conclusions differ.

What's the best way to avoid getting a task returned?

Write to the rubric. Turn each rubric row into a section of your paper, address it explicitly with support from the scenario or course concepts, and self-grade the draft against the rubric before submitting. Most returns come from vague or missing rubric coverage, not from wrong ideas.

How does C717 connect to other WGU business courses?

The stakeholder and decision-making skills from C717 carry directly into strategy-oriented courses like D081 Innovative and Strategic Thinking and globally focused ones like D080 Managing in a Global Business Environment. You can browse every business guide on our School of Business hub or the full guide index.