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Systematic consideration of ethical principles requires us to adopt and employ a set of “should” and “should nots” that define moral duty and virtue. By methodically evaluating our decisions in terms of these standards of conduct the moral dimension of our choices become clearer. A decision to lie about a child’s address to gain admission to a better school involves ethical principles arising from the values of honesty (the false address is a lie), integrity and moral courage (doing the right thing when the costs are high), loyalty (do I owe it to my children to do whatever I have to do?), fairness (other families want to send their child to that school but they play by the rules), and civic duty (obey the law and do your share). A parent who sees clearly the ethical considerations of the choice is more likely to make a good moral decision. Thus, each choice must pass through the filters of the core ethical values.
Consider All Stakeholders
Every decision we make affects other people, even my private eating habits. Eating all those doughnuts (and steaks and potato chips and theater popcorn) affects my health, which in turn affects my family. People of character have a moral obligation to consider the ethical implications of their decisions on others. Each person, group, or institution likely to be affected by a decision is a stakeholder with a moral claim on the decision maker.
As a result, ethical decision-makers rigorously think about whom their actions might affect. For example, in deciding how to deal with your ailing father who wants to move in, it is essential to consider the impact of the decision on all other members of the family. Is anyone going to be displaced by the move? How will the obligation to care for your father affect your other obligations and relationships? These and similar questions focusing on the stakeholders in the decision tend to broaden the considerations and help us avoid unintended harm.
The stakeholder concept provides a useful framework in which to evaluate these interests in such a way as to bring about the greatest good. It reinforces our obligation to make all reasonable efforts to foresee possible consequences and then to try to avid unjustified harm to the innocent.
Tiffany, a 17-year-old high school senior, and her two friends are invited to a fraternity party at the local college. Her mother agrees to let her go provided that she is home by midnight. Tiffany and her friends are having a great time and the party is still going strong at 11:30 when she decided to stay longer. Tiffany knows that if she calls home to say she will be late, her mother will make a scene and demand that she come home immediately. She figures she is better off not calling and making up some excuse later. The worst that will happen is that she will be grounded. Besides, if she leaves, her friends will have to go too and they’ll never forgive her. When she gets home at 1:30 a.m., her mother is frantic with worry. She called the parents of the other girls to see if they were home yet, and they too were upset. When tiffany’s mother said, “I was worried to death,” Tiffany responded, “Mom, you had no need to worry I was fine.” Tiffany’s brother was to take the S.A.T. the next morning and due to all the commotion he got almost no sleep. Who were the stakeholders in Tiffany’s decisions not to be home by midnight and not to call her mother to tell her so?
Obviously, Tiffany did not think beyond herself and her girlfriends. She knew what she wanted and figured that she could lie her way out of the problem with a phony excuse and take her punishment. This is a typically self-centered teenage thought process. As to her mother worrying, it simply did not cross Tiffany’s decision-making screen and besides, it was silly of her mother to worry since Tiffany knew she was perfectly safe and that worry was groundless. As for the concerns of the parents of the other girls and of her brother, that isn’t her problem.
Like it or not, the ripple effects of our actions are sometimes extensive and dramatic. The mother’s worry was real and substantial. And, it was predictable (had Tiffany bothered to ask herself how her mother would likely feel at 12:30, 12:40. 12:50, and so on) that she is morally accountable for causing that pain. She is also accountable for the upset she caused to the other parents and the risk that her brother may perform badly on his S.A.T. as the direct result of her failure to call home once she decided she was not going to abide by the conditions under which she was allowed to go to the party in the first place. We don’t have to know the exact consequences of our acts to be responsible for them. It is enough to know that others will be harmed.
Whether Tiffany would have changed her behavior had she thought through the consequences of her actions on all stakeholders depends on her level of ethical commitment. But the crux of the stakeholder concept is to force us to confront the notion and accept moral responsibility for the fact that our actions and inactions often affect more people than we realize.
Another, more tragic, example of the often disregarded effects of our actions on other stakeholders involves the decision to commit suicide or to destroy one’s life with drugs. “It’s my business, it’s my life” is a very shortsighted analysis. There are always stakeholders. The person who kills himself literally or figuratively with drugs or drink likely creates massive, long-term pain to surviving parents, spouses, children, and friends. Their lives will be forever changed, and for the worse. It is usually an act of selfishness to inflict this predictable harm on others. Even the familyless or friendless who commit suicide can injure others. Can you image the trauma of the people who find the body, especially if one dies in a violent way? In John Grisham’s book The Client, an innocent boy was traumatized by witnessing the suicide of a drunk, crooked lawyer. The point here is not to lobby for more consideration among those who commit suicide, but to illustrate the pervasive and inevitable quality of responsibility for consequences.
Ethical Competency
Noticing the ethical issues and being committed to acting ethically are still not always enough. In complex situations, reasoning and problem-solving skills – in short, ethical competency – are also necessary.
Evaluation and Fact Gathering
The first competency is to evaluate the situation. This includes collecting and examining relevant facts as well as knowing how to make decisions based on incomplete and ambiguous information. Before you decided what to do about your father who wants to move in with your family, you need to be sure you understand his wants and needs and the feelings and opinions of those who will be affected in a material way. What are the physical accommodations available in your home or in an outside facility, the financial impact of various alternatives, and the likely burdens that will fall on the stakeholders? A responsible, ethical decision maker makes a concerted effort to gather the facts that bear on important decisions
Creative Alternatives
Second, an ethically competent person must be creative. Creative decision making means developing alternative means of accomplishing goals in ways that avoid or minimize ethical problems. For example, in a situation requiring you to decide which of three employees to fire, you encounter a stumbling block to firing George, the least productive employee, who in a year George will be eligible for a pension. Would it be cheaper, wiser and kinder to all to see if he could retire early and still get the pension? Or since Sal is such a good employee, can you find him another place in the company for him? And perhaps Darla might rather have a job that is less demanding of her time (so she can care for her son) as long as she is assured of medical insurance. Einstein once said that a difficult problem cannot be solved on the level it was created. So it is with tough ethical dilemmas. If you see only the obvious alternatives and are constrained by a lack of imagination, it is difficult to find satisfactory solutions.
Foreseeing Potential Consequences
The third element of ethical competency is predicting potential consequences of various courses of conduct and assessing the likelihood that people will be helped or harmed by an act. None of us can predict all of the consequences of a decision. Nevertheless, it is important to make a reasonable good faith effort to assess what may happen. Remember Grandma’s ugly sweater? If you lie and tell her you like the sweater, are you prepared to also wear it, or will you lie again if she asks how you are enjoying it? Think ahead. What is the likelihood that she will find out eventually? And even if you are pretty sure you can keep your opinion a secret, is it worth the risk of really hurting her feelings in a major way?
Most of the time when someone lies, deceives or cheats it is done with the expectation that the dishonesty will go undetected, that the victims will never know they have been lied to or cheated. The obligation to foresee harmful consequences of unethical conduct, however, is not reduced by the intention to not get caught. Ethics requires that we perceive and assess the risk of harm to others. Oliver North did not expect the Nicaraguan Contra rebels to lose their funding based on his covert assistance, because he thought he would not be found out. But had he thought about the likely consequences if his trickery was discovered, the reaction of Congress would have been predictable. All of us have a moral responsibility to foresee what is foreseeable and not take undue risks that others will be injured by our conduct.
Stephanie Ericsson tells of a well-meaning sergeant in Vietnam. One of his men was killed in action, but he listened him as missing so that the man’s family would receive indefinite monthly compensation instead of the moderate lump-sum payment the military gives widows and children. The sergeant’s intentions regarding the family were noble. He cared so much he was willing to lie to help them out. In fact, the scheme worked and the family collected benefits for twenty years. They also kept their hopes alive and were unable to move on to a new life. There is sometimes a very cruel underside to acts of kindness.
Three Things to Think About
There are three aspects to thinking reasonably about consequences. First, anticipate all the things that could happen. Second, make a reasonable assessment of the risk, the likelihood that it will happen. Third, decide whether the risk is justified in view of the likelihood and gravity of the harms and benefits to any of the stakeholders. Risks involving the well-being of others become irresponsible as the combination of likelihood and seriousness of the harm increases. Thus, a high probability of even a small harm may make the act irresponsible (it was almost certain that Tiffany’s mother would worry) just as a small but real possibility of a serious harm is irresponsible (shooting a gun into the air in a populated area). A person who takes unnecessary risks of great harm is reckless and irresponsible.
For example, the executives who decided to allow the Challenger rocket to be sent up despite the fact that they were told that critical O-rings could have been damaged by the evening frost, risked and ultimately sacrificed the lives of seven astronauts. A delay would have been expensive and embarrassing, but clearly the downside demanded more prudence.
Humility
The final element of ethical competency is humility. An effective decision maker implements a decision in a way that increases the likelihood of its success by avoiding sanctimonious, pious, or self-righteous attitudes that generate resistance to the solution and an unwillingness to evaluate objectively whether the action is accomplishing its desired goal.
