The past two weeks have been a huge struggle for me. I spent much of that time fighting the pain from an infected tooth which had a broken root. It took me several days to get an “emergency” appointment with my dentist. During that appointment the determination was quickly made that the very loose and painful tooth had to be extracted. Because of the infection, I had to take a full week run of antibiotics. In addition, I had to be taken off my blood thinners slowly. Thus, I had to wait another full week for the oral surgery. During that time, in the periods of calm generated by acetaminophen and benzocaine, I struggled with this post.
The question, “Why do people do what they do?” kept hitting me in the face.
When not sleeping, eating or working at my computer, I watched sports and newscasts on television. What did I see? 1) Two Presidential debates with candidates questioning the behavior of rivals and impugning their ethics; 2) A report of an automotive manufacturer installing software in its cars that only shuts off high carbon emissions when the car is being tested for those emissions; 3) A report of another automotive manufacturer not acting on knowledge of dangerous defects in its cars for years; 4) A report on dozens of judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys passing around hundreds of emails with pornographic pictures and offensive stories; 5) A report on a State Attorney General indicted for leaking Grand Jury information and the commission of perjury by lying about it; 6) A report on a township supervisor voting positively on a zoning petition and building permit for a family member’s project; 7) A report on what appears to be wholesale, systematic doping by a country’s sports infrastructure in a recent Olympics; and 8) A popular race car driver appearing to intentionally wreck another popular driver in retaliation for a perceived intentional wreck the previous week.
I turned off the television and went to my computer. What did I do at my computer? When I was not working on this post, I was cleaning up my email backlog and sitting through three webinars. What did I find in my email newsletters? 1) A report on scholarly authors attempting to “game” the JIF (Journal Impact Factor) by self-citing their own articles, or by bartering citations from friends and colleagues by citing their articles in a pyrimad-type scheme called citation stacking; 2) A report on a scientist who pleaded guilty to fraud for faking data involving a study of HIV vaccine; 3) A report on a recently published article entitled “The Mirage of Prestige: The educational quality of courses in prestigious and non-prestigious institutions” that attempts to measure the difference in academic outcomes between the so-called prestigious and non-prestigious institutions; 4) Reports on several institutions faking data on campus crime statistics, salary information on graduates and admissions profile data; and 5) A report that estimates the costs of complying with federally imposed regulations across the higher education sector to be $27 billion annually.
What did I hear in the webinars?: 1) The first webinar dealt with plagiarism. The primary assumption was that faculty increasingly believe that students do not know what plagiarism is. However, even in the face of that previous assumption, faculty increasingly believe the frequency of plagiarism is increasing and more students are intentionally participating in it; 2) The second webinar was a presentation from the field of professional training. The primary point of this webinar was that compliance training is one of the most difficult areas of professional development in which to produce quality eLearning programs, while at the same time, it is one of the areas of fastest growing demand. In this webinar one question was continually raised: “Should we train people to act ethically or just to meet compliance requirements?” No matter how we answer the previous question, the webinar suggested that the CEO must lead the organization by exhibiting a constant pattern of ethical behavior, because the organization will rise to a level no higher than the one set by its leader. 3) The third webinar focused on the teaching of ethics. One of the foundational assumptions of the webinar presenters was that ethics was only a matter of content knowledge that could and should be taught within the confines of an academic discipline. The presenters kept saying that within a given context, there were rules, regulations and obligations that had to be met. The presenters dismissed any comment or suggestion that there were universal principles that applied across disciplines. Ethics were situational and behaviorally oriented.
I return to my original question, “what is the difference between ethics and ethical behavior?” I admit that I come down on the side of the universalists on this question. I believe that there are universal rules of right and wrong. In this sense one’s ethical behavior is a result of one living ethically. It becomes a matter of living by principles, not according to specific rules that can change when circumstances change. For students and faculty, honesty requires telling the truth, not lying, not stealing or not cheating, no matter the personal consequence, no matter whether every one else is doing it, or whether you can get away without getting caught. Living the principled life means doing the same thing whether someone is watching you or not. The second great commandment “Love your neighbor” is a principle, not a rule dependent upon whether the individual in need is “like you” or is “very different.” The great requirement from Micah 6:8, “what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (KJV) presents us another set of principles. Ethics and ethical behavior are not only matters of content, but of values. They are matters of the head and the heart. They require not only comprehension and accession, but also action by the individual based on the individual’s knowledge and beliefs.
Ethics and ethical behavior are not the same thing. However, ethical behavior should be the outgrowth of ethics. One should act based on one’s principles. How do we discover our principles (ethics) and translate those into actions (ethical behavior)? Two suggestions from Scripture provide us guidance in this endeavor. The first is Paul’s admonition to Timothy: “But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” (II Timothy 3: 14-17, KJV) The second is Solomon’s advice to his son: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” (Proverbs 3: 5&6, KJV)
If we diligently seek God’s principles, He will show them to us and guide us in the way we should go. We can follow in His footsteps on the path to righteousness and salvation.
My next post continues this discussion by raising the suggestion that the CEO of an organization should be its Chief Ethics Officer and Chief Encouragement Officer in addition to being its Chief Executive Officer.