Another sex scandal involving a politician takes the day's headlines, while on the business pages there are reports of financial skullduggery. Last week the placement of the news was the reverse, with financial misdeeds taking the lead and political scandals on the inside pages.
There wouldn't be much interest in the entertainment section without salacious gossip. But it isn't only politics, business and entertainment/sports that are rife with corruption, lying and theft. There is hardly a profession that is spared such indignities.
Professional schools and professional organizations have introduced ethics requirements. But what exactly is it that should be taught? In my ethics classes most students begin the semester thinking that everything that needs to be learned about ethics is taught to children in the home. There is nothing more for them to learn. While there is some truth in this, it is far from the total picture.
Basic attitudes are taught at a young age, but how to apply ethical principles and values in particular situations is often not at all clear. What's more, social pressures can distort those values to such an extent that individuals no longer see that their behavior is morally dubious.
Being able to sort through conflicting values in murky situations requires critical thinking. It isn't a matter of coming up with the correct answer but the ability to sort through nuances, being able to make educated guesses, having the ability to weigh likely outcomes and accurately assessing the moral dimensions of the situation.
This is practical wisdom, something that children do not and cannot possess. Aristotle explains it this way: "Whereas young people become accomplished in geometry and mathematics, and wise within these limits, prudent young people do not seem to be found. The reason is that practical wisdom is concerned with particulars as well as universals, and particulars become known from experience, but a young person lacks experience, since some length of time is needed to produce it" (Nicomachean Ethics 1142 a).
Ethical principles can be taught as facts to be learned and can be tested on fill-in-the-blanks tests. But if practical wisdom requires experience, then ethical education for adults is something different than facts and information. Unfortunately, most ethical education, both in college classrooms and in continuing education courses in the professions, relies on the lecture format-listen to an expert, learn the facts, know the principles.
This month John W. Dean III, White House counsel to Richard Nixon, is presenting a half-day program in ethics in which he recounts the lessons he learned in the White House cover-ups after the arrests of the Watergate burglars. The assumption behind this approach to ethics is that lawyers listening to Dean recount his ethical travails and lapses will learn from his errors, as though hearing a cautionary tale serves as an inoculation against perfidy.
This approach to teaching ethics is largely useless and, I predict, will have little effect in altering unethical behavior. What does make a difference is applying thought to particulars and thinking and talking about ethical issues with others over an extended period of time. What I know about moral development is that any program or course that doesn't extend over several months will be ineffective in preventing unethical behavior. Short courses can help identify ethical issues in the first instance and can provide information necessary for ethical compliance issues, but it is the examination of ethical situations, looked at from many angles by many people, that can make a difference in novel and contradictory situations.
It is difficult for teachers to refrain from giving the "right answer" to ethical problems. I sometimes need to restrain myself from correcting a student. But for someone to gain the experience of thinking through moral complexities, the ethical teacher needs to be a guide and mentor, not a lecturer or judge.
John Dean asks, "How in God's name could so many lawyers get involved in something like this?" Focusing on an individual's integrity is only part of the solution. Many ethical scandals involve people who otherwise are upright. The problem doesn't lie in lack of rectitude but in institutions that create pressures to rationalize bad behavior. There are many examples of this, the most obvious being a company in which everything is measured by the bottom line. People cut corners, cover-up, create fictions, cheat and lie in order to keep a job, get a raise, make partner or receive a bonus. One reason many students cheat, for example, is because the pressure for good grades is enormous. Where people compete for a scarcity of goods-money, grades, etc.-doing the right thing for many takes a back seat to success.
While institutions pay lip service to ethics, few reward those who report unethical behavior. Instead, whistleblowers pay a steep price. Being fired is only the beginning of a whistleblower's problems. Finding new work is difficult (who wants to hire a trouble-maker?) and often people lose houses and spouses.
Some institutional problems are subtle. A recent study points to the relationship between sleep deprivation and unethical behavior. Nurses and students deprived of sleep demonstrated, amongst other things, rudeness and attempts to take unearned money. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-leadership/post/why-slee...
In her book, Willful Blindness, Margaret Heffernan writes about the toll working long hours takes on workers' ability to make sound ethical judgments. She argues that obedience to authority, our penchant for conformity, the bystander effect in which we think others will take care of the problem, distance from the effects of our actions and the division of labor all contribute to diffusing personal responsibility. It isn't that people don't know what the right thing is; it is that they go morally blind.
Knowing that ethics starts with individual responsibility but is either supported or undermined by systemic pressures, it is possible to design a real ethics program. Organizations and professions that send people off to ethics programs thinking that good behavior will be insured but don't look at the structures that support moral behavior and those that are impediment to it are fooling themselves.
