what we're reading now
follow us on facebook
follow us on twitter
subscribe to our blog
find it


What We're Reading Now

Get Your Ethics Goggles Here

3 October 2017

Allison watched Greg Brozenske’s second ethics animation and was grateful for an easy to understand decision-making framework that can help her to slow down so she can draw on four ethical traditions.

Tags: allison read, allison watched, animation, courage, ethics, leadership

Earlier this year, the University of Virginia Darden School of Business asked one of our partners, Greg Brozenkse, to create an animation to set the stage for its first-year Ethics course and explain the four main traditions within ethical theory (principles, character, consequences, and care). Last month, he published a follow-up animation to explain how managers (or really anyone) can utilize a decision-making framework to draw on these four ethical traditions to frame issues in moral terms.

In the animation, Pam is a manager at HipTrips.com. Her team proposes a new product that would possibly be attractive to customers, but also make the company more money and get Pam a bigger bonus while potentially violating customer privacy.

There's nothing wrong with pursing profit and you better if you want to keep your job, but too often in these moments and when making other important decisions I bet you trust your gut. I know I can fall into the trap of thinking my gut is super reliable and misstep by "relying on intuition which can blind [me] to the possible negative consequences of [my] actions, increase the likelihood of mistakes, and prevent [me] from considering the situation from other perspectives."

As the 10-minute animation unfolds, you'll watch Pam view her problem through different "lenses." (I like her green goggles best!)

While it's important to consider all the ethical traditions, my favorite thing about using this framework is that it helps me to slow down. Now more than ever, I feel like the different communities I'm a part of and maybe even the whole world feels the need to analyze things quickly, place or accept blame fast, and take immediate action. There's a time and place for speed rather than deliberation, but even if I need to give feedback or decide fast, I find that there is almost always time to do this breathing exercise, take myself through the decision-making framework in Greg's animation, and answer the questions in this post.



Comments

Our Comment Policy:

Our blog posts are only half of the conversation. What our readers have to say is equally important to us, and we're grateful for all the comments that continue the dialog.

To ensure that the discussion here is as useful as possible to all of our readers, please be respectful of our contributors and refrain from harassing, threatening and/or vulgar language. We reserve the right to screen and remove any comments from the site. If you have a question about a comment or want to discuss our policy, please contact us. We'll talk it over.


There are no comments for this entry yet.

 

Leave a comment

*Name:

*Email:

Notify me of follow-up comments?


Enter the characters you see below:



« Return to What We're Reading Now