I’m Ethical – Are You? It Depends on How You Look At It
I would like to provoke some critical thinking by claiming that I am ethical and, then by asking if you are. This simple statement and question can lead to complex considerations. For example, recently while attending an event with two dozen professionals, I asked each person to use a five-point scale to score their own ethical behavior and, then, to score his/her perception of the ethical behavior of others in their profession; five points was the most ethical. Interestingly, the average of the individual self-assessments for ethical behavior were quite high, an average of 4.5 on the scale. And, even more interestingly, the assessments of others in the profession were much lower, an average of 2.8 on the scale. Mind you, the same people giving themselves high ethical scores were being given much lower scores by their peers.