What does the law require of me?
• What do ethical standards of behavior demand of me? • How should I act to conform to both?
The Gray Area When the rules are unclear, an ethical person looks beyond his / her own self-interest and evaluates the interests of the stakeholders potentially affected by the action or decision. Ethical decision making requires that a decision maker be willing, at least sometimes, to take an action that may not be in his / her best interest. This is known as the “moral point of view.”
Sometimes people believe that the ends justify the means. In ethics it all depends on one’s motives for acting. If one’s goals are good and noble, and the means we use to achieve them are also good and noble, then the ends do justify the means. However, if one views the concept as an excuse to achieve one’s goals through any means necessary, no matter how immoral, illegal, or offensive to others the means may be, then that person is attempting to justify the wrongdoing by pointing to a good outcome regardless of ethi- cal considerations such as how one’s actions affect others. Nothing could be further from
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the truth. The process you follow to decide on a course of action is more important than achieving the end goal. If this were not true from a moral point of view, then we could rationalize all kinds of actions in the name of achieving a desired goal, even if that goal does harm to others while satisfying our personal needs and desires.
Imagine that you work for a CPA firm and are asked to evaluate three software packages for a client. Your boss tells you that the managing partners are pushing for one of these packages, which just happens to be the firm’s internal software. Your initial numerical analysis of the packages based on functionality, availability of upgrades, and customer ser- vice indicates that a competitor’s package is better than the firm’s software. Your boss tells you, in no uncertain terms, to redo the analysis. You know what she wants. Even though you feel uncomfortable with the situation, you decide to “tweak” the numbers to show a preference for the firm’s package. The end result desired in this case is to choose the firm’s package. The means to that end was to alter the analysis, an unethical act because it is dishonest and unfair to the other competitors (not to mention the client) to change the objectively determined results. In this instance, ethical decision making requires that we place the client’s interests (to get the best software package for his needs) above those of the firm (to get the new business and not upset the boss).
Ethical Relativism Ethical relativism is the philosophical view that what is right or wrong and good or bad is not absolute but variable and relative, depending on the person, circumstances, or social situation. Ethical relativism holds that morality is relative to the norms of one’s culture. That is, whether an action is right or wrong depends on the moral norms of the society in which it is practiced. The same action may be morally right in one society but be morally wrong in another. For the ethical relativist, there are no universal moral standards— standards that can be universally applied to all peoples at all times. The only moral standards against which a society’s practices can be judged are its own. If ethical relativism is correct, then there can be no common framework for resolving moral disputes or for reaching agree- ment on ethical matters among members of different societies.
Most ethicists reject the theory of ethical relativism. Some claim that while the moral practices of societies may differ, the fundamental moral principles underlying these practices do not. For example, there was a situation in Singapore in the 1990s where a young American spray-painted graffiti on several cars. The Singaporean government’s penalty was to “cane” the youngster by striking him on the buttocks four times. In the United States, some said it was cruel and unusual punishment for such a minor offense. In Singapore, the issue is that to protect the interests of society, the government treats harshly those who commit relatively minor offenses. After all, it does send a message that in Singapore, this and similar types of behavior will not be tolerated. While such a practice might be condemned in the United States, most people would agree with the underlying moral principle—the duty to protect the safety and security of the public (life and liberty concerns). Societies, then, may differ in their application of fundamental moral principles but agree on the principles.
Situation Ethics Situation ethics , a term first coined in 1966 by an Episcopalian priest, Joseph Fletcher, is a body of ethical thought that takes normative principles—like the virtues, natural law, and Kant’s categorical imperative that relies on the universality of actions—and general- izes them so that an agent can “make sense” out of one’s experience when confronting ethical dilemmas. Unlike ethical relativism that denies universal moral principles, claim- ing the moral codes are strictly subjective, situational ethicists recognize the existence of normative principles but question whether they should be applied as strict directives
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(i.e., imperatives) or, instead, as guidelines that agents should use when determining a course of ethical conduct. In other words, situationists ask: Should these norms, as general- izations about what is desired, be regarded as intrinsically valid and universally obliging of all human beings? For situationists, the circumstances surrounding an ethical dilemma can and should influence an agent’s decision-making process and may alter an agent’s decision when warranted. Thus, situation ethics holds that “what in some times and in some places is ethical can be in other times and in other places unethical.” 15 A problem with a situation ethics perspective is that it can be used to rationalize actions such as those in the Penn State scandal.
Student Cheating Another danger of situational ethics is it can be used to rationalize cheating. Cheating in general is at epidemic proportions in society. The 2012 Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth, conducted by the Josephson Institute of Ethics, found that of 43,000 high school students surveyed, 51 percent admitted to having cheated on a test during 2012, 55 percent admitted to lying and 20 percent admitted to stealing.