William Baker, a freelance writer and regular contributer to the Boston Globe, spent the last eighteen months blogging about ethics on BNET. In his last post today, he summed up what he has learned from this experience.

* Profit never outweighs wrong.

* The solution to a tricky ethical dilemma is often to just say “no.”

* The best way to deal with a bad idea is to come up with a better one.

* If your gut tells you something is wrong, it probably is. Listen to your instincts.

* There are some work environments that you can’t fix, so dust off your resume.

* You can’t blame anyone else if you get caught up in ethically questionable behavior. There are no victims when “no” is available.

* Tolerating poor ethical behavior is just as bad as doing it yourself.

* The ethical character of an organization is dictated from the top down. Establish an environment where employees know that cutting corners will not be tolerated, and they won’t.

* Your own ethical character is tied in with the companies you do business with. Not all clients are good clients.

* You are a citizen of humanity. Selfish goals cannot outweigh the greater good.

* Writing down a code of conduct is a good thing. Establishing it by example is even better.

Lessons of an Ethics Writer | Where’s the Line ? | BNET

Most of these are excellent. The only one I have a problem with is “You are a citizen of humanity. Selfish goals cannot outweigh the greater good.” I don’t know what it means. It sounds like a positive ethic (e.g. feed the hungry, shelter the homeless), which sound good, but create fuzzy ethical lines.

Overall Kudos to William Baker for his practical ethical insights.

Tags: WilliamBaker, BNet, Lessons of an Ethics Writer, Ethics for the Real World, Clint Korver,

I spent the last nine days participating in a program called the Hoffman Process. I have spent decades of my life developing my intellect, but this is the first time I have ever spent dedicated time developing my emotions. To my surprise, my undeveloped emotions have played a much bigger role in my life than I first imagined. Here is how Hoffman describes the the role of emotions in our life:

Emotional learning that occurred early in our lives largely shapes our adult experiences. Whether we are aware of it or not, our very sense of self is more strongly influenced by early life conditioning than most of us ever imagine. This includes our capacity to have happy and successful relationships, career, health and spiritual well being. The negative aspects of this conditioning produce unwanted outcomes and self-defeating behaviors in our adult lives. About The Process | The Hoffman Process | Hoffman Institute Foundation

Ethics is traditionally an intellectual activity. I describe my goal in Ethics for the Real World to help people think clearly about ethics. I describe tools to overcome common thinking traps. Through the Hoffman Process, I see more clearly how emotional traps can also hamper our ability to make good ethical choices.

Love is the ultimate ethical code. When you love yourself and you love others, ethical temptations disappear. However, most of us (myself included) have developed negative emotional patterns that prevent us from entering this state. I talk about love in my book, but I did not focus so much on the  emotional patterns that may block us from love.

I’m not yet sure how my Hoffman experience will play out in my research on ethical decision making, but as I continue along this line of exploration I will share my thoughts, emotions, and observations here. At this moment, I feel grounded, energized, and hopeful.

Tags: ethics, ethics and emotions, clint korver, ethics for the real world

Randy Paush became an online phenomenon last September when he gave his final lecture at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University. Randy is dying of pancreatic cancer. His last lecture has been viewed by millions on the internet. Well worth watching if you haven’t seen it already.

In his last few months he has been focused on his wife and kids, ages 6, 3, and 1. He has also been working with Jeffrey Zaslow to write a book offering his life lessons, mostly focused on an audience of three. As Randy puts it, “I’m attempting to put myself in a bottle that will one day wash up on the beach for my children.” Here is one of his messages:

“If I could only give three words of advice, they would be, ‘Tell the truth.’ If I got three more words, I’d add, ‘All the time.’ ” A Final Farewell - WSJ.com

Tags: randypaush, tell the truth, lying, clint korver, ethics for the real world

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Grand Theft Auto IV, which started selling April 29th, is the most expensive game ever made ($100 million), one of the highest rated games ever made, had the largest first day sales (609,000) of any game ever made, and might become one of the most controversial games ever made.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), the New York City police, and even New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg have already gone on record protesting the lessons the game teaches kids.

But is there anything ethically amiss with the game? What about this notion that the game somehow exerts an inappropriate influence on kids? Let’s break it down and see. First we need to separate out the prudential and legal issues to more clearly focus on the ethics.

Legal: MADD wants to reclassify Grand Theft Auto IV as an Adults Only game. Neither Sony nor Microsoft currently sell AO on their consoles in the US, so this could disrupt sales considerably. However, just as the current classification does not mean there are no ethical issues, a reclassification of AO would not mean the game had ethical issues. Ethics do not change based on the lobbying abilities of any particular constituency.

Prudential: Any issues related to the sales or profitability of the game are prudential. Take Two Interactive’s (the maker of the game) decision to allow people to drive home drunk in the game, is a business decision that they presumably believe will help sell more games. They probably left other behaviors that they believed would hurt game sales. Sales and profit motivations are prudential only.

Ethical: But have they gone too far? Are they somehow risking what is right in the name of profit? Take Two discloses in its mature rating, that that game contains “Blood, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, and Use of Drugs and Alcohol.” This allows consumers to make an informed purchase decision, so I don’t see any issues here with lying or deception. This in some ways is the acid test of ethics. Most ethical transgressions involve deception.

I don’t see any ethically sensitive issues with Grand Theft Auto IV. Now this doesn’t mean I want my kids playing it. But the decision of whether or not to let my kids play the game is a prudential one. And I must compare this decision in the context of other activities they engage in — from playing make believe cops & robbers to watching violent shows like the Shield on TV to reading articles in the morning newspaper about Josef Fritzl. These are important decisions with complex considerations, but they are not ethically sensitive.

Tags: Grandtheft auto IV, ethics, personal ethics, clint korver, ethics for the real world

I haven’t blogged about Josef Fritzl, the man who imprisoned and sexually abused his daughter for 24 years, because the stories make me sick to my stomach.

A few observations:

Ethical transgressions tend to bring along other forms of ethical violations.
In a separate interview, a sister-in-law, Christine R, told the Oesterreich newspaper that Josef Fritzl used to go into the cellar every morning at 0900 “apparently to draw plans for machines, which he sold to firms” BBC NEWS | Europe | ‘Second man’ went to abuse cellar

The cellar is where he had imprisoned his daughter.

If you are following this story, pay attention to what dulled Mr. Fritzl’s ethical sensitivities to the enormity of his actions. Maybe it was exceptional circumstances that made it difficult for him to retain his ethical compass. Or maybe he incrementally lost his way, making small ethical concessions that eventually led to large ethical transgressions. And most importantly, how prevalent are the elements that dulled Mr. Fritzl’s ethical sensitivities in other parts of our society?

Tags: Josef Fritzl, ethics, ethics for the real world, clint korver

The San Jose Mercury News this week ran a story this week discussing the growing popularity of user review sites.

San Francisco-based Yelp.com. boasts its review count is up to 2.3 million and growing. Other sites that feature user reviews include TripAdvisor.com., Citysearch.com., epionions.com., Drugstore.com., Hotels.com., Netflix.com. and Angieslist.com., which is a subscription-based site.

Navigating the world of online user reviews - San Jose Mercury News

Personally, I wonder about a lot of these reviews. How many of the Amazon book reviews are written by the authors or the their friends. If an author can’t get at least one glowing review from their mother, then …. Incidentally, my mom thinks this blog is great.

The ethics of writing online user reviews (like writing anywhere) is pretty simple–Tell the Whole Truth. The implementation of this principle can be tricky because the context is tricky (it is not clear how sites or individuals make money), the accountability is less (it is a more anonymous setting), and the authors have less experience (non journalists like me are putting our thoughts online).

Here are some simple ethical guidelines for those writing online user reviews.

1. Do not lie. If you think a product is mediocre, don’t say it’s great. Be truthful about your experiences.
2. Do not deceive by omission. If you think the camera sucks at taking pictures, but has a pretty case. Saying “this is a great looking camera” and that’s it leaves a misleading impression. This is not a clever way of “being nice and ethical at the same time. It is deception, the same as lying.
3. Be transparent about potential conflicts of interest. If you are being paid to do the review, are the author of the book, are the mother of the author, have an investment in the company making the product, or have any association that may create a motivational bias, be transparent about it. Often people closest to a product or service have the best information. A potential motivational bias should not preclude you from creating a review.

Sometimes it may be difficult for those close to a product to tell if they have a motivational bias or if they have been deceptive in a review. We are all too good at rationalizations and fooling ourselves. Here are some simple tests to apply to your next review:

• Other-shoe test: How would you feel if someone else wrote this review and you were going to use it as part of your decision-making process?
• Loved-one test: Would you change the review if you discovered that your sister, mother or another loved one were going to rely on it?

When your writing involves information beyond your own personal experiences, the ethics get slightly more complicated–for example, issues of plagiarism and fact checking become a bigger issue. For those interested in diving deeper on this subject, The Society of Professional Journalists has created a Code of Ethics. Happy online reviewing.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: ethics, clint korver, ethics for the real world, online reviews, yelp, computer ethics, online ethics

A good friend emailed me an excellent suggestion this morning:

I think the average visitor would benefit greatly from some historical perspective on the subject of ethics. I think it is widely accepted that “back in a day” we were a more ethically driven society. Often that point of view is buttressed up with anecdotal evidence such a “leaving our front door unlocked”, “picking up hitch hikers” , “IOU’s at the corner store” “lack of corporate fraud”, etc. Some of these, or all, may actually point to moral erosion but [I] assume there is an ethical component.

I guess I wonder if that is all true or has technology just allowed us to broadcast the misdeeds in a quicker and wider fashion? If the historical perspective does indeed point to a more ethically challenged environment today then I, the reader, desire to know why.

While I do not know of any surveys that answers this question directly, there are some proxies available that shed some light on this issue. The Bureau of Justice Statistics each year conducts a National Crime Victimization Survey where they sample over 77,000 households and 130,000 people across the nation. According to this survey, both harming and stealing (two important ethical issues) have declined noticeably from 25 years ago.

Bureau of Justice Statistics Property Crime Trends

If the ethics of our society have improved over the last few decades (at least in terms of harming and stealing), why do people general feel that ethics are in decay. Here are a few hypotheses:

• The above data is too narrowly focused. A broader survey including such things as white collar crime, lying, and other issues would show ethics in decline.

• We collectively suffer from the availability bias. This is a cognitive bias that affects our ability to assess the probability an event will occur. We believe that the ease with which we can recall information about an event is indicative of the frequency with which the event occurs. Vivid, emotionally charged examples, (think of the last time your were lied to or robbed from), seem much more frequent than they really are simply because the memories are easily available.

• We are becoming more ethically sensitive, so ethical violations that would not have gotten any attention in the past are being noticed and reported on.

I personally believe it is some combination of the last two. What do you think?

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: ethics, ethical trends, clint korver, ethics for the real world, harming, stealing

In the celebrity gossip section of The San Jose Mercury News this morning I found this bit of gossip right next to a detailed account of Obama’s bowling skills:

CBS anchor Katie Couric was to read her 12-year-old daughter’s favorite poem at a literary event at Avery Fisher Hall in Manhattan this week. But first she had a little confession to make. “Most people don’t know this, but I am a published poet. My first poem was published in the St. James Grammar School Gazette. It was a poem about snow. I’ve never told anyone that I plagiarized that poem. It was really written by Penny Eastman. After 45 years of keeping that secret, I am relieved to finally get it off my chest.” San Jose Mercury News

Just think about this for a second — Ms. Couric has been carrying the burden of her deception for 45 years–45 YEARS. I bet this is not some oops and by the way kind of thing for her. She remembers the situation vividly. She not only knows it was about snow but also that it was really written by Penny Eastman. How many of your assignments from grammer school do you remember? How many of the sources you read for those assignments do you remember?

The phenomenon of being able to vividly recall ethical transgressions is quite common. When teaching ethics we ask the students to describe an ethically sensitive situation they have encountered in their past. Students can recall incidents from years ago as if they happened yesterday because the incidents still bother them. Their anxiety keeps it fresh in their minds.

One of the fundamental reasons to avoid lying is because it minimizes our psychic burdens. Forget the effects on other people for the moment. Every ethical transgression becomes part of the story we tell ourselves. We may try to rationalize or repress, but we always know the truth. We know we did something we should not have done.

Given proper reflection, past mistakes can have powerful learning value. When our students discuss and analyze their past situations, they often become a powerful motivation not to not fall prey to the same temptations again. Take a lesson from Katie, and consider the value of a clean conscious next time you are tempted to lie.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: ethics, Clint Korver, Ethics for the Real World, Katie Couric, plagerism, lying

Moralization is the process of wanting to enforce your ethics to others. For example, most people feel that rape and murder are immoral acts and should be punished. Our society codifies moralizations such as these through our legal system. Our collective sense of right and wrong bind us together as a community. Unfortunately, our collective inner voices are not always reliable.

Psychologists, such as Steven Pinker from Harvard, have recently discovered that moralization invokes a unique psychological state compared to simply having an opinion. According to his article The Moral Instinct in the New York Times cognitive scientists at Princeton have used an M.R.I. to show that different parts of a person’s brain lights up when they engage in moralization.

What triggers the frontal lobe to begin to moralize is still under investigation. According to anthropologists like Richard Shweder and Alan Fiske, who survey moral concerns across many cultures, common triggers include harm, fiarness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity.

The punch line in Professor Pinker’s article is that moral sense (our inner voice if you will), can be mislead. It shows how

… our psychological makeup can get in the way of our arriving at the most defensible moral conclusions. The moral sense, we are learning, is as vulnerable to illusions as the other senses. It is apt to confuse morality per se with purity, status and conformity. It tends to reframe practical problems as moral crusades and thus see their solution in punitive aggression. It imposes taboos that make certain ideas indiscussible. And it has the nasty habit of always putting the self on the side of the angels.

The Moral Instinct - New York Times

He sites numerous examples where people have strong moralization feelings about sex, government, commerce, religion, diet and others that they are not able to explain. They just know. They know because the idea makes them shudder. This is a dangerous measure of morality.

People have shuddered at all kinds of morally irrelevant violations of purity in their culture: touching an untouchable, drinking from the same water fountain as a Negro, allowing Jewish blood to mix with Aryan blood, tolerating sodomy between consenting men. And if our ancestors’ repugnance had carried the day, we never would have had autopsies, vaccinations, blood transfusions, artificial insemination, organ transplants and in vitro fertilization, all of which were denounced as immoral when they were new.

The Moral Instinct - New York Times

Bottom line — our inner voice is not sufficient for developing our personal ethical code. It is the place to start, but it must be tempered by the wisdom of our ethical role models and sound reasoning.

Tags: ethicalcode, morals, ethics, Steven Pinker, inner voice, moralization