How developing character can help us make decisions that align with our own – and our organisation’s – principles and values.
The media tycoon Robert Maxwell is unlikely to be remembered for his business acumen or charm.
He was not, of course, without success: he built one of the best-known and most successful media empires of the late 20th century. But mention the name Maxwell to anyone since his untimely – and suspicious – death in 1991, and we’re more likely to encounter words such as “cheat”, “crook” or “unethical”; words used to describe how he did business, his character, all of which betoken a lack of honesty and integrity, of principle.
When we make decisions, most of us naturally want to create the best outcomes possible for everyone involved or affected. Unlike Maxwell, we want to choose ethically, to act in line with our own and our organisation’s sense of values, our moral compass. We don’t want to ignore all advice and steal from the company pension scheme.
Of the five questions Harvard professor Joseph Badaracco asks us to consider when making tough judgement calls, four of them ask us to consider our decisions with ethics front of mind. He not only exhorts us to think of the consequences of what we choose, he also asks us to have an eye to our obligations and to the values and cultures of our organisations. Then he suggests we ask ourselves “what can I live with?”.
Making these ethical choices is often framed around thinking through the consequences of our actions. What will be the ultimate result of one course of action versus another? What might people think of us if we behave in a certain way? What would happen if everyone did what we do?
These are helpful questions, but focusing on the consequences of our decisions can be an almost impossible task when the decision is complex, the options unpalatable and the results pretty much impossible to predict. Often, we simply don’t have the time to think through every possible outcome of what we’re about to decide. And, if we do, we might end up a victim of decision paralysis and fail to decide at all.
So, how can we make sure our decision-making is as principled as possible while also getting things done?
Let’s start by looking at what we mean by principled or ethical decision-making in the first place. Ethics are the moral principles or standards that govern our behaviours and actions – a set of values that help us to define right from wrong.
What we perceive as right and wrong might differ depending on each one of us and the situations we find ourselves in, but there are some generally accepted principles that most of us would find desirable, such as being able to work in a safe environment where fairness is valued, or respectfully treating others as we would wish to be treated ourselves.
So ethical or principled decision-making asks us to make our choices with these principles front of mind. They’re the kind of decisions that show we are trustworthy, that we’re being responsible and that we care for others. It assumes that we have carefully reviewed our options and have made a choice – as Badaracco suggests – in line with personal and organisational values.
At an organisational level, the field of business ethics offers a framework through which we can – or should – live out our values at work. It’s important that we understand and respect the environment we work in.
But when push comes to shove, making those tricky judgements is often down to us as individuals, and we need to find ways to act ethically and without suffering from moral injury – a situation where we might feel guilt or shame for having to make a decision that clashes with our own principles.
Given how tricky making decisions can be, especially if we want to make ethical choices, a number of models have been developed to encourage us to stop and consider carefully the options we choose. And they can be useful when we have the time and space to work through them, or perhaps where there’s a clear ethical dilemma to be resolved – for example, if we’re faced with deciding on who will be part of a redundancy pool or if we’re developing a new product or service that might impact our local environment.
Laura Nash, an ethics researcher, created the Twelve Questions Model as a simple approach to ethical decision-making. In her model, she suggests asking ourselves 12 questions to help us to improve the chances that we’ll make the right ethical decision. By working through the questions using the model, we are encouraged to look at the choices we’re making from a range of perspectives – not just our own.
Nash’s opening question is perhaps the most telling of all. By asking us to focus on the problem we’re looking to resolve, it makes us reflect on purpose and intention: what do we hope to achieve? Why? What are the potential implications?
From there, we can broaden out our thinking to test and refine our initial assumptions.
For the Josephson Institute of Ethics, ethics is about putting our principles into action. We might not always realise it, but our words, actions and attitudes reflect choices that we make all the time – so we’d better be careful about the choices we make.
This needs us to take our decision-making seriously, understand when our decisions are more complex or important – and therefore need more thought – and develop our:
The Josephson Seven-Step Path to Better Decisions offers a framework to help us to use these core characteristics to best effect.
Stop and think
Clarify goals
Determine facts
Develop options
Consider consequences
Choose
Monitor and modify
The seven steps have much in common with a good problem-solving process, asking us to reflect carefully and to take on board a range of opinions and options before we decide. But they also have a specific ethical dimension.
The first step encourages us to stop and think ahead, a crucial discipline if we are to avoid thoughtless, poor decisions. Perhaps counter-intuitively, it’s particularly important where we feel tired, stressed or under pressure to act.
When we slow down, we’re getting ready to exercise our discernment. Think of it as the decision-making equivalent of counting to 10 when we’re angry and want to avoid an impulsive (and usually regrettable) reaction.
Once we’ve slowed down, we can interrogate carefully our short- and long-term aims. What are we really looking to achieve?
What evidence can we muster to support an intelligent choice? Do we need more (or different) information? What facts can we rely on?
We should think about the credibility of our sources and evaluate the facts we’re considering in terms of completeness and reliability.
When we know what we want to achieve and have made our best judgement about the information at hand, we need to make a list of options, a range of actions we might take to accomplish our goals.
This is where talking to others we trust can broaden our perspective and bring in new thinking.
This is a key stage of the Josephson steps. It asks us to do two things:
First, we need to filter our choices through the Institute’s Six Pillars of Character:
Will what we decide violate any of these core ethical principles? Is it irresponsible, unfair or uncaring? Will it contravene any rules?
On this basis, we can eliminate clearly unethical options.
Then we need to identify our stakeholders and consider how the decision is likely to affect them – for good or ill.
When making a choice, it can be helpful to test out our decision with people we trust.
We might also consider the most ethical person we can think of and ask ourselves “What would they do?”. “How might we feel if the people we respect found out about the decision?”.
This is also the time to follow the simple rule of treating people the way we would want to be treated.
Decision-making can never be a precise science. Even with the best possible information and intentions, we can’t always make the right choice.
Principled decision-making asks us to acknowledge this, to monitor the effects of our choices and to adjust as necessary.
The Josephson model provides a helpful checklist, reminding us that our principles and values should be to the fore when we choose. But it’s also clear that it will only work if we lay the groundwork first, whether we’re building those pillars of character or developing our discernment.
And that takes us right back to the founding fathers of classical philosophy, and an approach to principled decision-making that we can use whatever our situation and no matter how simple or momentous a decision we’re taking.
It takes us to the field of virtue ethics.
Making decisions that take into account 'right' and 'wrong' can be difficult and time-consuming; it’s not always possible (or desirable) to have endless debates about the consequences of our choices. And even in organisations with strong and stated values, or where frameworks exist about how we should behave or act, when it comes down to it, we’re often the ones who have to make a close judgement call. Rules can only take us so far.
These dilemmas are reflected in three main schools of thought about ethics.
Deontology (or duty, obligation or rule-based ethics) states that whether something is right or wrong is based on a series of rules or moral laws. It sounds simple – don’t lie or cheat; don’t steal – and is appealingly clear. But it can also be limiting and may not help if we find ourselves in a situation where following the rules might make us choose something out of line with our own personal values, or where the choices are less clear-cut.
Consequentialism, on the other hand, asks us to judge our actions by their results. For example, the idea of utilitarianism assesses an action’s consequences by whether it offers the “greatest good for the greatest number”. As we’ve seen, weighing up the pros and cons of a decision based on predicted outcomes is often important, especially when the stakes are high. But this process can never be definitive and is only ever subjective. Who decides what the greatest good is, and for whom?
A third approach is virtue ethics, which suggests that we should decide and act based on our character. It’s this character that provides our own personal framework for making principled decisions.
These three approaches can be illustrated by a common superhero dilemma: should that superhero kill the baddie when she has the chance? Deontology would say no: killing is wrong. Consequentialism might look at the utility of the situation and conclude that killing one baddie might prevent the deaths of many more. Using a virtue ethics approach, the superhero would consider her own character, deciding that she will not kill the baddie because that’s not the kind of person she is.
It’s an approach that believes that when we do good, we reveal ourselves to be of excellent character, displaying virtues such as courage, fairness and wisdom – characteristics akin to the Josephson Six Pillars we’ve already encountered.
For Plato and Aristotle, virtue was a means of achieving what they called eudaimonia ('happiness' or 'human flourishing'). It helps us to live a good life, to be the best that we can be. Virtue ethics, then, does not provide guidance about particular situations or moral dilemmas. Instead, it asks us to build our character more generally, so that we will instinctively know how to act when we face difficult decisions and challenges.
In decision-making terms, we can use the idea of virtue ethics in three key ways:
We build character through practice; for Aristotle, “We become builders... by building, and we become harpists by playing the harp. Similarly, then, we become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions.”
That means creating virtuous habits. Our actions shape our character and what we do also determines what we become, an idea summed up by the American philosopher Will Durant, as: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.” If we repeatedly act in line with our aspirations, then, eventually, the gap between who we are and who we want to be will close.
For example, the more we choose to be honest, the more we’re likely to be in future, even when the going gets tough. Conversely, if we’re habitual liars, we’ll find it harder to tell the truth when we need to.
Virtue is also about balance, achieving inner harmony. Aristotle argued that each moral virtue is a mean between two corresponding vices. For example, courage is a mean between the two vices of cowardice and foolhardiness. This idea of a 'golden mean' gives us a practical principle we can apply if we’re not exactly sure how our virtual selves might react when we have to make a tricky choice.
Faced with that decision, we should think of the two most extreme, opposing choices we could make (vices), and then try to find the mean (virtue) between them.
For example, we might have a colleague who is repeatedly late for work. What action should we take? Bawling them out might feel attractive, but it would hardly show us in our best virtuous light. Not saying anything is nothing more than an avoidance strategy, hardly courageous or honest. The golden mean in this case would be taking that person to one side to discuss their behaviour, hear their side of the story and come up with a plan together to improve the situation.
We can choose an action that would be taken by a virtuous person, someone we admire for their character, trustworthiness and reliability. What would they do? How can we act in a similar way?
Virtue ethics has been criticised for not offering enough specific guidance, for being a bit fuzzy. But that’s the point. It’s not intended to be a one-time, one-situation solution.
The power of virtue ethics lies in a focus on the role played by character, judgement and integrity, all of which we can (intentionally) develop over time. It encourages us to take personal moral responsibility for our actions and helps us to know how to respond ethically by asking ourselves: what kind of person should I be? And that will help to improve our decision-making practice, whether for routine decisions that need little thought or for the trickiest moral dilemma.
The older (less famous) Disney brother, Roy, claimed that “it is not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.” It’s a view that’s at the heart of a virtue ethics approach to decision-making, offering a framework for 'knowing' the right thing to do without recourse to codified rule books or lengthy debates about consequences. It simply asks us to define what character we want to have and then live – and make decisions – in accordance with that.
Virtue ethics puts ethical thinking at the centre of everything we do at work, helping us to make principled decisions in a more straightforward and streamlined way – and to steer clear of any Maxwell-like shortcuts and sharp practice.
Explain what the Josephson Institute means by “discernment” and “discipline”.
Describe how virtue ethics differs from consequentialism.
Reflect on how you might use virtue ethics to help you make principled decisions. Identify two or three things you might do to build character. Gow might you use the golden mean? Who will be your virtuous exemplar?