Ethics Readings and Resources

To improve ethical conduct and overcome blindspots, Ethical Systems suggest the following:
• Be more humble.
• Examine and correct the reward systems that lead to ethical fading and motivated blindness.
• Use data.
• Set the stage for “psychological safety” when it comes to ethics.
• Examine the language euphemisms that hide ethics from the decision maker.
We can also reduce the distance between us and those affected by our actions and think of persons with faces and loved ones, instead of cases or jobs.

We have been sharing articles about ethics training, how to be more ethical and what makes for an ethical organisation, but what is ethics? The meaning of "ethics" is hard to pin down, and the views many people have about ethics are shaky.

Are you willing to concede if you don’t know something? Or do you get defensive when someone questions your beliefs?

Your answers might say a lot about how much “intellectual humility” you have. According to researchers, intellectual humility centers on recognizing the limitations of your own knowledge and beliefs. Being open to new ideas can help you learn new things, develop new concepts and challenge your limitations.

Law enforcement agencies strive to recruit, hire, and train only those who demonstrate strong moral values before they enter the academy. Yet, even departments’ best efforts will not prevent instances of police misconduct from garnering attention. Such incidents undermine public trust, jeopardize important investigations, and expose agencies to considerable liability. Many departments respond to these events by adopting formal ethics training programs that focus on character development.

Citizenship behaviours at work are important. These behaviours are not formally rewarded by financial incentives and yet serve critical functions. A workplace with high levels of citizenship and prosocial behaviours leads employees to be more productive, engaged, satisfied, experience less stress, and reduce turnover. As a result, many managers and organisations tend to encourage their employees to be more prosocial and engage in more citizenship behaviours in the forms of helping co-workers in difficult times, promoting the company’s image to the public outside of work, and engaging in corporate volunteering programs.
Research has found a paradoxical effect of engaging in prosocial behaviours at work. Those who were initially most prosocial and engaged in the most citizenship behaviours were also among the most deviant at a later time; they were more likely to curse at someone at work, act rudely, lie, or steal from the organisation.

Ethics isn’t the only way to define what the ‘best’ decision might look like. Some might see it as the one that advances their own goals and interests, or makes the most money. Others may focus on what’s likely to be the most popular choice.

At the heart of these is a nugget of ethics, but each is a distraction from the questions that matter most. Ethics defines the best option as the one which best achieves what is good, right and consistent with the nature of the things in question.
Values tell us what’s good – they’re the things we strive for, desire and seek to protect.
Principles tell us what’s right – outlining how we may or may not achieve our values.
Purpose is your reason for being – it gives life to your values and principles.
Ethics is the process of questioning, discovering and defending our values, principles and purpose. It’s about finding out who we are and staying true to that in the face of temptations, challenges and uncertainty. It’s not always fun and it’s hardly ever easy, but if we commit to it, we set ourselves up to make decisions we can stand by, building a life that’s truly our own and a future we want to be a part of.

Traditional teaching in ethics focuses on abstract theories and rational approaches. Ethics training has often focused on reasoning, with students working through case studies as rationally as possible. But after all we’ve learned through neuroscience, social psychology, and behavioural economics, it’s clear we can’t leave out emotion.

Issues over poor and unethical behaviour have been a concern for police forces around the world, with many pointing to the misconduct of individual ‘bad apples’; but research by organisational ethicist Dr Eva Tsahuridu of Victoria Police Registration and Services Board highlights the influence of organisational factors on poor behaviour and the need to address them.

The 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) was released by Transparency International this week. CPI ranks 180 countries and territories around the world by their perceived levels of public sector corruption. The COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis and growing security threats across the globe are fuelling a new wave of uncertainty. In an already unstable world, countries failing to address their corruption problems worsen the effects.

This year’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) reveals that 124 countries have stagnant corruption levels, while the number of countries in decline is increasing. This has the most serious consequences, as global peace is deteriorating and corruption is both a key cause and result of this.

We have all heard the phrase "humble leadership" but what does it mean and how can leaders practice humble leadership? This article compiles the findings of many recent studies and distils them into useful advice how and why to develop a humble leadership style. Key points are that humble leaders improve performance, humble leadership works across cultures and organisations, humble leadership cannot be faked, and leaders have the most to loose.