Consider the following scenario: While attending a industry conference/trade show, you were walking down a hallway adjacent to the main venue. You passed a number of smaller meeting rooms, and a sign outside an open door in one of them indicated your competitors had used one of them for a morning sales planning meeting. It was lunch time, the door was open, all their employees were gone, and the sign outside the room indicated they had vacated the room for the day and were done using the room.
There were numerous interesting-looking company documents cast about randomly on the tables and chairs inside the room.
Would it be appropriate, legal, and ethical to pick up a document on the table and put it in your briefcase to read later on? Why?
Would your response change if the documents were left in a trash can inside the room. Why?
