The Mayor's Gambit: WWYD?
By Kathryn Baker
Guest Writer
Mayor Lightfoot’s deputy campaign manager sent emails to Chicago Public Schools teachers and Chicago City Colleges administrators soliciting student campaign workers in exchange for class credit.
Did Lightfoot’s team violate any codes of conduct? This example presents a situation that requires an individual to make an ethical decision. How are such decisions made? Are there general criteria to guide one’s decision-making process applicable to a variety of situations?
While a concise guideline for ethical behavior remains elusive (because of the inexact nature of what is acceptable and unacceptable), there are things that can be examined to facilitate one’s critical thinking about ethical conduct.
Most people rely on the moral grounding they grew up with when deciding what is right or wrong. They acquire this internal value system through things that mold an individual: family, school, institutions, society. But morals alone are inadequate when making an ethical decision. “An ethical statement has to deal with how we rationally address the moral values we have acquired,” according to ethicist Rev. Dr. José Rodríguez.
And the difference between ethical and moral decisions are the consequences, says Rodríguez. A purely moral decision may lead one to adopt views based on the racism one grew up with. The rational-critical approach tends to be more adequate because it considers more factors than just the opinion of the person making the decision. An ethical decision might help a person understand that racism is wrong, explains Rodríguez.
There is a house is on fire. Two people remain inside. You can only take out one person, and one of the two happens to be your mother. The other person is a scientist that has discovered the cure for cancer. This ethical dilemma is posed by ethicist Dr. Ismael García in his book, Introduccion a la Etica Cristiana. A moral decision would be to save your mother. An ethical decision requires critical reason which could be to save whoever you can.
Context matters in understanding the ambiguous nature of ethical decisions, says Rosibel O’brien-Cruz, lecturer in philosophy at Harold Washington College. One may be taught as a kid not to lie and the choices between lying and telling the truth are usually simple and concrete. The choice of whether to lie are often less clear in the adult world. Perhaps the abusive boyfriend of a close friend wants to know where she is. Lying may protect her.
Individuals need to understand their moral grounding and develop critical thinking skills to evaluate behavior that can be applied to real world ethical situations. Such knowledge may have prevented Mayor Lightfoot’s staffer from pressing the send button. Somewhere the Mayor’s office has an ethics policy, but these policies are often an organization’s answer to what is acceptable or not and often implemented not because they are ethical, but as protections from legal action, according to Kamran Swanson, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Harold Washington College. An employee might follow an organization’s ethics and still not behave ethically. Policy and morality are not always the same, he says.
While there are no ethical statements that everyone agrees on, neither can its opposite, often expressed as “my truth, your truth,” adequately deal with questionable behavior in a complex world. There is something dissatisfying about regarding ethical standards as mere personal opinion, says Swanson. This relativism is insufficient because guess what, says Cruz, “you don’t live in the world by yourself.” Elevating the ethical standards by which society governs itself begins with each individual wrestling with their own moral codes through the many lenses of critical thinking.
"Guidelines” then, loosely constructed may include:
Understanding the difference between morals and ethics.
Understanding why personal moral codes are often inadequate to make ethical decisions.
The inexact nature of ethical decisions following an organizations’ ethical policy is not necessarily acting ethically.
Making an effort to get past relativistic attitudes in order to serve the greater good.
Had Lightfoot’s deputy campaign manager regarded any of these as worth considering, who knows, Lightfoot might be celebrating a second term.
