Ethical Dilemma
As I prepare for my ethics course starting in a month, I am spending time thinking about the root issues of business ethics and how best to present and then teach that material to best effect. I’m fairly clear that the best method will be to force debates that engage the students and make them think through the issues I define for them. Obviously, I want to provide a framework and guidance on the topics, so it is not completely free-form and therefore random in outcome or impact, but I also want to leave enough room for the debate to be in a context that is meaningful to them. If I have learned anything from having kids and teaching younger (twenties and early thirty-something’s) students over twelve years, it is that they have a much different context of life than I do and their perspective is considerably different than mine. I’m not necessarily sure that means their perspective isn’t more appropriate in this day and age than mine, given the dramatic changes in the world around us these days, so I want to be sure to anticipate that somewhat different perspective when it comes to how we debate the fundamental issues of ethics, which I think are enduring, sustainable and almost everlasting.
I suppose I should challenge myself to reaffirm that constancy, but I am confident that right and wrong is not so different today than it was since caveman walked the earth, nor will it likely be so different when we’re all flying off to Mars for the weekend. Obviously the context and some fundamental realities differ and need to be accounted for. We no longer worry so much about being eaten by a saber-toothed tiger on any given day, but we do have to be careful not to get run over by an autonomous Amazon Prime truck. We are more likely to get bitten by malware than some disease-infested mosquito the size of a house cat. But for the most part the ethical issues of business are the same as the ethical issues of life, but to teach them and ingrain them with any sustainability in students, the contextual realities need to be recognizable to the students, I figure.
Yesterday I drove up to Dana Point to have lunch with Gary & Oswaldo since it was Oswaldo’s birthday. Kim couldn’t join since she is still testing positive for COVID even though she is feeling fine (actually, since this writing, she is now negative). That gave me about an hour in the Tesla driving up lovely Rt.5 along the coast at a low-traffic time of day. I set the cruise control (I just can’t get comfortable with autonomous mode, so that new technology remains wasted on me) and put on the latest Malcolm Gladwell audiobook called Miracle and Wonder that is about the songwriting process of Paul Simon. I was in a deep-thought mode thinking about ethics as the sun glistened off the Pacific. I concluded that ethics boils down to three root causes. This was all a derivative of my story the other day about The Root of All Evil. The bottom line is that ethical dilemmas are not JUST about money (though many are). It can also be about power (some might call that control) or ego (some would characterize that as the wounds of youth or some such thing).
It occurs to me that this triumvirate is not so different from the three goals one is required to set when one plays that old childhood game called Life. Remember, you were given a little plastic car and one of the first stops you had to decide how much of 100 points you wanted to allocate to the goals of Money, Fame and Love. Those three goals in that game are not so different from Money, Power and Ego as the base colors on the ethical palette. As I pulled into the restaurant to meet Gary & Oswaldo for lunch, this was all on my mind. I was imagining laying out that concept or construct for the ethics course in my introductory lecture, but I wanted to test my thinking. G&O are always good sounding boards and are very thoughtful people who, combined, cover a lot of range for what people might think of any given idea. Gary is the historian and studied academic who has been a major league organizational administrator. Oswaldo has his feet more on the ground of everyday life with a broader cultural upbringing (he is Venezuelan by birth) and has had to learn to live in Miami, LA and New York, so he is very well-grounded in the realities of the moment more so than Gary, who is a bit more historically rooted. So, I laid my thinking on them as we waited for our lunch.
The first issue I asked was whether those three covered 98% or more of the ethical waterfront. After road testing several semantic alternative definitions, we all tended to conclude that the three covered the vast majority of the waterfront (no one volunteered the 98% level precisely…that is way too exacting for Gary to pin himself down for sure). Then Gary brought up an interesting permutation. He asked about competitiveness, specifically with the example of doing what your boss orders you to do, even if you don’t agree with it. This opened an interesting line of discussion. I am prepared to suggest that competitiveness is a subset of some combination of money and power, but the “following orders” part of the equation seems quite different. When one thinks of that, one immediately goes to the guards at Auschwitz as an example, and I think we all agree that following unethical orders is simply wrong. However, the beauty or challenge of ethics is that there are always shades of grey that muddy the waters and make them less clear than at Auschwitz. Degree of ethical dilemma is a very real consideration when faced with situational ethics problems.
Nonetheless, I think Gary’s thought has currency in this ethical framework, and I have decided that my ethics framework will include at least a fourth dimension in the form of the dilemma of following the leadership of others (blindly or with self-reflection) and, as a natural extension, the degree to which we have a responsibility to the common good to be aware of and call out bad behavior (and probably praise good behavior).
That all made me realize that I am currently faced with an ethical dilemma of my own. The other day a friend told me something about their child that involved that adult child’s participation in something questionable going on politically on the national stage. That same day I heard that the FBI is still actively investigating the events that this person attended. I have no reason to doubt the father’s comment as to his child’s involvement, but it is still hearsay evidence. I have no knowledge if this person’s actions fall into the category of the criminal, but I now wonder whether I should call the FBI tip line and pass along what I know. We all are faced with similar dilemmas in our lives, dilemmas that pit friends and family potentially against the abstract of the greater good. Clearly this sort of third-party ethical issue needs to find a place in the business ethics dialogue, but in the meantime I am still wrestling with my personal ethical conundrum. My political leaning make me despise the actions all the more, but I am trying NOT to let those influence my ethical choice. Time will tell where I land on this issue, but as of now, I am officially torn.