NAF Professional Ethics

NAF Professional Ethics

Lesson 3 An Ethical Decision-Making Framework

NAF Professional Ethics

Lesson 3

An Ethical Decision-Making Framework

Student Resources

Resource / Description
Student Resource 3.1 / Reading: What Is an Ethical Dilemma?
Student Resource 3.2 / Analysis: Considering an Ethical Dilemma
Student Resource 3.3 / Reading: An Ethical Decision-Making Framework
Student Resource 3.4 / Assignment: Ethics Case Study on High School Issues
Student Resource 3.5 / Guide: Socratic Seminar
Student Resource 3.6 / Reference: Discussion Starters
Student Resource 3.7 / Case Studies: Ethical Dilemmas in Career Fields

Student Resource 3.1

Reading: What Is an Ethical Dilemma?

Directions: Read through the four scenarios below—each describes an ethical dilemma. Choose one to analyze, and then use Student Resource 3.2, Analysis: Considering an Ethical Dilemma, to guide you.

Ethical dilemmas are situations in which a person is faced with two convincing yet conflicting alternatives for resolving a difficult problem that challenges values. What makes the situation a dilemma is that two or more moral values a person considers important are in conflict. Often the right, or ethical, thing to do is not clear or is difficult to choose. It may not be possible to find a solution that feels completely right.

We have all experienced ethical dilemmas in our lives. Consider the following scenarios:

Scenario 1: You run into your friend’s mom on the street. She asks you if you enjoyed the movie with her daughter on Friday night. You didn’t go to the movie with her daughter on Friday night, but it appears that your friend told her mom that you did. Do you tell her mom that you didn’t go to the movie, or do you tell her that the movie was great? Or is it okay to just not answer, smile, and quickly walk away?

Scenario 2: You observe what appears to be a homeless mother and her children stealing food at the grocery store. Do you say something to the manager?

Scenario 3: You are being scouted to play for your dream team at your dream college. A week before the last big game, one of your coaches takes you aside and offers you performance-enhancing drugs to increase your chances of really impressing the scouts and getting the scholarship. He says he’s looking out for your best interests and can guarantee you won’t be tested in the near future. Do you take the drugs just this one time to secure your future?

Scenario 4: You have an opportunity for an internship at a respected business in your community. You submit a project you worked on with several other NAF students with your portfolio. Through the interview process, you discover that you are given credit for a section of the project that really impressed the company. In fact, another member of your team, who is also applying for the internship, completed that section with little input from you. Do you tell the interviewers that you were not responsible for that section of the project?

Student Resource 3.2

Analysis: Considering an Ethical Dilemma

Student Name:______Date:______

Directions: Choose one ethical dilemma from Student Resource 3.1 and respond to the following questions in a sentence or two for each.

How would you describe the ethical dilemma in this situation: what are the conflicting positions?

What do you think is the most ethical advice to give to someone in this situation? Why?

Is there more than one response to this situation that could be considered ethical? Why or why not?

Think back on the characteristics of an ethical person. Which virtues would a person display if he or she chose to act ethically in this situation?

Student Resource 3.3

Reading: An Ethical Decision-Making Framework

By now, you have some idea of what it means to behave ethically as a person and as a professional. But how do you know what the right or ethical thing to do in a particular situation is? We are going to look at an approach to decision making that will help you recognize the ethical choice.

First, figure out what the problem really is. That may sound silly, but sometimes we feel uneasy about a situation and we aren’t sure why. Maybe we think we are supposed to feel a certain way, but we don’t. Or we aren’t thinking the “right” way—the way other people seem to think about this issue.

You also have to think about the other people involved in the situation—not just yourself. For example, some smokers say “I’m not hurting anybody else. It’s my body and I can choose to smoke if I want to.” But what if that person is a parent with a baby at home? Now the person is exposing the baby to cigarette smoke, which can damage the baby’s health.

Another consideration is short- and long-term effects of your decision. Sometimes people can be less, or more, affected by your decision depending on how far into the future we look.

It’s also important to consider if laws are being broken. Remember that an ethical decision is not necessarily a lawful one. The civil rights movement and other social justice movements have encouraged people to deliberately break laws that were unjust, such as laws separating Caucasian and African-American people on a bus. But if a good law is being broken, that adds another factor to your decision. Remember, too, that it can be tempting to claim a rule is unfair when you don’t like it, but if you think carefully, you can distinguish between what is really unfair and what is just something you dislike.

It can be easy to establish the facts of a situation. If you are babysitting your little brother and find him in the bathroom, flushing your cell phone down the toilet, the facts are clear. But what if he’s been playing outside and comes in with a bloody nose because he had a fight with another kid in the neighborhood? You will need to get the facts before you punish him or go yell at the neighbor kid.

One of the big challenges is figuring out where the facts stop and opinion begins. Your brother might tell you that the other kid started the fight, that he was “being mean” or that he “said something” and your brother had to retaliate. But how much of that is fact and how much is your brother’s opinion? If you weren’t there, it can be hard to tell.

That doesn’t mean your brother is a liar. All of us have our own unique viewpoint on what happened, and we tend to present things in the way that makes the most sense to us or the way that makes us look best. That’s human nature.

While this may not seem logical, sometimes certain facts or opinions have a bigger influence than others. If you know the neighbor kid is a bully, you may be more inclined to believe your brother’s side of the story. On the other hand, if you know the neighbor kid is sad because his dog just died, you might be more inclined to tell your brother to give the kid a break.

Opinions matter to us personally, but they don’t necessarily have a bearing on the ethical way to resolve a situation. Opinions are not always supported by facts. Sometimes opinions are plain old incorrect. This can be hard to swallow: sure, you are entitled to your opinion, but that doesn’t mean you’re right or that your opinion should carry any weight when making an ethical decision.

Strongly held opinions can make it impossible to see other perspectives. They can make us intolerant and judgmental. They can even make us blind to the truth of the matter.

Some facts or opinions matter more than others. An expert, firsthand witness account carries more weight than a view of the situation from someone who has a stake in the dilemma or who was nearby.

Take a few minutes now to complete the chart.

At times, we may feel like a problem has only one solution: “He hit my baby brother, so I’m going to beat him up!” When we are under stress, it can be difficult for our brains to think of a variety of different solutions. Many ethical dilemmas are inherently stressful, so it is important to stop and take the time to think of many possible options, or at least to evaluate the options you do have.

Using the questions listed above, it is easy to see that beating up the neighbor kid, while it might be tempting, would not be the ethical choice. It would not do much good and might do a lot of damage, particularly if the neighbor kid has relatives that would then want to beat you up. It would not be a respectful or fair choice or good for the community as a whole.

On the other hand, arranging a conversation with you and your brother and the neighbor kid and a relative of the neighbor kid would be much more respectful and fair, and better for the community.

Now you’ve come up with multiple options, but how do you know which is the best—or most ethical—one to choose? You can use this simple test to evaluate your choices.

1. Reversibility: How would I feel if the situation were reversed? If someone thought your baby brother beat up their baby brother, wouldn’t you rather they asked you for an explanation than just chased after your baby brother and hit him?

2. Publicity: Is this a choice you want your name on? Would you want to be interviewed on TV about it? Would you post it on your Facebook page, your Twitter feed, your Instagram account? If not, maybe it’s not a good decision.

3. Harm: Does it do less damage than other options? Sometimes, unfortunately, there are no “good” options. In this case, you have to choose the “least bad” one: the one that does the least amount of harm to the smallest number of people. The concept of harm can be difficult to pin down. Is harm objective or subjective? Is there a difference between psychological and physical harm? Is harm the same thing as offense?

Write down the “test results” in your notebook and be prepared to discuss them with the class.

Even the best decision can fail if it isn’t implemented properly. Imagine you make the “ethical” choice to talk to the kid who beat up your brother, rather than attacking him. If you start the conversation by insulting the kid and calling him names, you really aren’t making a good choice, even if you followed a good decision-making process.

You need to think carefully about how to follow through on your decisions. Then, once the decision has been implemented, you need to analyze how it turned out—and what you learned from the situation.

You won’t be able to complete this last step for your ethical dilemma, since it’s not a real situation. But take some time now to discuss this process with your class. How is it similar to or different from what you have done in the past when facing a big decision?

Student Resource 3.4

Assignment: Ethics Case Study on
High School Issues

Student Name:______Date:______

Directions: Choose one of the ethical dilemmas below and use an ethical decision-making framework to analyze it. Before you begin, read through all of the instructions on this resource, and read the assessment criteria at the end to make sure you understand how your work will be assessed.

Choose an Ethical Dilemma

·  One of your really good friends has a previous history of mental illness. She’s been seeing a psychiatrist on a regular basis for a while, but one day she confides in you and tells you that she stopped going to her appointments. She makes you promise not to say anything to anyone. She also has stopped taking the medication the doctor prescribed for her, and she’s starting to have symptoms again. Your friend’s family is really messed up and you know they can stress her out and make her feel even worse. But your friend is starting to act really strange now that she’s not on her medication, and she’s starting to worry you. What should you do?

·  You work in a local coffee bar on the weekends. It’s a pretty fun job. You especially like working on Friday nights, when they have live music from local bands. But one night you notice that one guy you work with is making a lot of “mistakes” when he rings up the customers. He is giving his friends free food and drinks and overcharging other customers to cover the difference. The other customers aren’t noticing because they’re too busy paying attention to the music. The totals in the cash register look as if they will be correct, but some people had to pay for food and drinks they didn’t order, or else they got overcharged. What should you do?

·  Your friend is planning a big party for this upcoming weekend. She knows you have an amazing knowledge of music, so she asks you to handle all the music for the party. The music will sound way better on your mom’s brand-new tablet, so you ask if you can borrow it for the party. Your mom says yes. At the party, some kids are drinking beer. You don’t have anything alcoholic to drink, but one of the other kids spills a beer all over your mom’s tablet. Now the tablet doesn’t work properly. Your mom knew about the party, but she will freak out if she finds out people were drinking there. What should you do?

Circle or draw a star next to the dilemma you will use for this assignment, or talk to your teacher about using a more personal example.

Apply the Decision-Making Framework

Write a few sentences or a short paragraph for each of the five steps in the decision-making framework. Complete your assignment on the computer or use a separate sheet of paper. Refer back to Student Resource 3.3, Reading: An Ethical Decision-Making Framework, to help you remember how to complete each step of the framework.

1. Figure out what the problem really is.
2. Identify key facts and opinions.
3. Think about other possible options.
4. Test your decision.
5. Make your decision and evaluate the outcome.

Make sure your assignment meets or exceeds the following assessment criteria: