75% of the Time I am Ethically Right all the Time

What is about ethics that tend to cause mass confusion, riots, and nuclear annihilation? When you consider that not one person I have asked today can provide me with a direct answer should begin to give you an understanding why this occurs: people fear what they do not understand. As a result of this misunderstanding, ethics can generally be defined as many different things to many different people. Often, ethics are confused with morality leading many highly educated professionals or "Joe six-packs" to make unethical decisions. Sometimes I find myself questioning what is ethics? I also tend to try and convince myself in true "Law and Order" style as to why something is ethical or unethical. This is never a very effective or efficient manner as talking to yourself is consider a faux pas by many of my co-workers. However, throughout these years I have come up with one simple understanding of ethics: ethics is the weak minded, timid brother of morality.

Morality is a robust and easy to understand "feeling". Often, morality tends to give us a clear direction as to where we are headed and how we are going to get there. Unfortunately, morality also tends to step on others' morality in it pursuit of global domination. In many ways morality means well, but like a bull in a china shop tends to destroy and fracture many items around it. Ethics, on the other hand, is the much more timid, scientific (if you will) brother of morality. Both are the offspring of social and cultural rules established through the hilarious trial and error process of our relatives. Both have been examined and re-examined by scholarly geniuses and the not so scholarly. However, ethics tends to take a much more scientific and worldly view of society and its actions as opposed to morality's local and finite understanding of the world around it. The constant quest of ethics isn't necessarily to be right, but rather to be fair.

So what exactly is ethics? For me, ethics is a way of combining the general aspects of morality, social norms, evidence based practices, the law, and common sense. Ethics is also a long term solution to a social dilemma. For many, ethics can be a painful decision to make, but it is usually the wise decision leading to successful longevity for both the individual or organization. However, as society evolves, ethics evolve. This means that professionals and organizations must be willing to invest both time and resources into continually evaluating, examining and, if needed, re-writing their own ethical backgrounds. This agreement is critical if ethics is to continue to evolve and our understanding to increase.

In summary, ethics is something that no one person or organization can define. On an organizational or individual level, ethics tend to vary greatly. However, ethics can be viewed as a combination of morality, social norms, evidence based practices, the law, and good ole' common sense. While we may never truly understand what it means to be ethical, we can agree that it is ever changing and evolving. At minimum, I know that I am 75% right all the time.