Thoughts on Professional Ethics: Why Professional Schools Fail, and the Searching for Moral Goodness
I was in the Sistine Chapel with my family a few summers ago breathing in the majestic beauty and history of the place. The guards repeatedly said in loud voices and many languages: “No Photographs!! No Photographs!!!” So, I left my camera slung over my shoulder in that 500-year-old holy shrine. Next to me in the crowd was an American father and son. The son appeared to be about 17 years old, about the same age as our sons. I watched the father enlist his son to block for him in the crowded room, so that he could point his camera to the ceiling and take pictures, even as the guard repeated persistently: “No Photographs!!!” What struck me as shocking, was not so much the arrogance and selfishness of the father, rather the complicity he was drawing from his son and what he was teaching his son by asking him to help and by ignoring the very clear rules of that setting. Message of father to son: It’s okay to cheat, try not to get caught. I then wondered how that father behaved in other facets of his life.
We learn how to act from those moments when certain behaviors are expected of us and it is often someone more senior than us, who guides and shapes that behavior. It can be a parent, teacher, elder, or peer who influences how we decide what to do. Not every such moment is a life altering moral dilemma like those described by philosophers through the ages: Five people on one train track versus one person on the other – who do you save? It is in the smaller moments when the stakes are low, and perhaps no one is looking, that we develop the habits and dispositions which then become vital as the stakes rise.
Moral Coherence in Modern Life
The genesis of my doctoral thesis years ago came from a graduate ethics course in which we studied a range of topics entitled: Business Ethics, Medical Ethics, Educational Ethics, Legal Ethics. We reviewed the great philosophers and the handful of time-tested schemas used in the field of applied ethics. Kant on duty, Aristotle on goals, Mill on utility, Gilligan on care. The class was centered on what the right thing to do was in various sticky moral situations, and which moral philosophy to apply. What struck me was the sort of moral “code switching” that was implied by the whole exercise. In one field we should calculate this way, in another field and setting that way. You apply Kant here, and then apply Gilligan there perhaps.
Where is the coherence in that? We live one life and we live it in community, even as our communities shift from work to family to social settings. Is there not a simple, somewhat universal code of behavior that most if not all of our fellow travelers could agree to? Or at least a reasonably accepted process by which most all of us should/could handle moral moments, whether at work or at home? This is by no means a new question. Some would say it is THE question for human persons across time. I was convinced that moral coherence should be an aspiration across the many different situations and environments we find ourselves in throughout our lifetimes, not one set of rules and patterns of behavior for business, one for home, one for church, another for the field of medicine and a separate one for social life
What are we aiming for in professional ethics (i.e., medical, business, legal, military, educational ethics?
If we hope for ethical behavior, and that means ethical action, in a group of professionals, then the ultimate goal should be to instill in them the practical wisdom (phronesis) to see and act consistently in all their work related moral deliberations and decision making. This requires a level of awareness about what constitutes a moral moment, sound judgment and consistency in applying one’s moral code. To ultimately be effective, it must lead to good, moral action.
As a short aside, it is not at all clear to me that we can assume that all educated professionals in our world today, even have a basic understanding of what a moral moment/moral dilemma is or looks like. If there is no consensus on that, it is doubtful that a professional code of conduct is going to have much effect.
Why teaching professional ethics is not in and of itself enough
Challenges with teaching professional ethics:
- Unless we start at the level of the human person and the human life and we talk about deep principles and the language of virtues, not just individually shaped values, we are aiming too low and unlikely to succeed in making much of this stick for young adults. Some argue, I do not, that young adulthood is too late.
- A typical approach to applied ethics is to start by studying what the great philosophers told us. The philosophers alone may not provide sufficient scaffolding as a precursor to then apply ethical approaches to real world challenges in a consistent way, for a variety of reasons.
- If we are trying to prepare individuals for an ethical life, within which they are disposed to ethical business decisions, some broad connections to moral guidance through moral sources are needed. I do believe this is the right first step – a precursor to the narrower field of applied ethics.
- It is not about how to behave as an entrepreneur, it is about how to behave as a human person. The narrowing to a given setting (medical ethics, business ethics, military ethics), endemic to professional schools, has the unintended consequence of striking a level too low to really root itself. There is nothing wrong with having guidelines or understandings among professionals about how one should conduct oneself within a profession, but in order to be an ethical person, that set of competencies and patterns of behavior really needs to exist at the level of a life, not just an organizational life. Put another way, as a precursor to any exploration of applied ethics, there needs to be the broader exercise of what I call “personal formation:” a person’s stance with respect to moral goodness, a life of meaning/purpose, living virtuously. Unless young adults have explored and unpacked this, I don’t think applied ethics, untethered from a deeper set of moral roots, has much of a prayer of working consistently.
- I think that the best way to provide the foundational ideas and antecedents to good ethical action is to expose individuals to deep, rich sources that connect them to people and ideas well beyond themselves. The logical approach is to share not just the philosophers’ calculus, but also the world’s wisdom traditions. An examination of such texts and ideas can provide individuals with a deeper sense of things and connect them to time tested principles that they should at least understand and perhaps adopt. Without them, individuals are lost to make meaning at just those moments when
meaning can be the catalyst for good action. There are clear ways to do this without the implications of religious instruction or proselytizing. And it need not be a long drawn out experience, although the more time spent on such matters the better, from my perspective - Another unintended byproduct of the whole professional development arena is the centrality of “leadership” in the objectives, titles and promotional materials of degree and certificate programs. Virtually every program is understandably billed as and commits to developing leaders, e.g., virtuous, adaptable, servant, transformational, and authentic leaders. The instant we shift into our role as leaders, we move into our organizational contexts. We are no longer exploring our selves as individual “whole human” selves, rather we are shifting into our organizational roles. Our mindsets are zeroed in on our stance and approach to our work within our professional roles. As stated above, I believe this starts the exercise of personal formation at a level too low to take deep root.
- A related question when we do enter the field of ethics for a given profession is: How do we punish offenders in our community? If they get a slap on the wrist, that says something. If, as in the current revision of accepted norms around sexual harassment and inappropriate relations, violators are removed from the community actually and symbolically, that creates a higher price to pay. While it is a last resort and after the fact, it may serve as a warning to others and embolden those around such others to serve as a collective conscience of sorts. If there is little or no risk of this, then the incentive to conform is radically reduced.
To make claims about developing an ethical orientation among entrepreneurs, or MBA’s or any group of adults:
- The exploration should start at the level of the whole human person, the whole human life
- It has to be rooted in something bigger than business decisions, or professional codes, beyond
leadership - There likely need to be connections made to deeper sources, guideposts, influences (i.e., the world’s
wisdom traditions) - It has to focus ultimately on action, not just awareness or judgment alone
- It is about having the proper mental schemas/mindsets that lead to “good” behavior and the goal
should be coherence across all aspects of one’s life - The consequences of failure (the risk of being ostracized by the community) should be dire
Other topics to be reckoned with:
- Good action vs. right action
- Broadly accepted virtues vs. individually constructed values
This is exactly what I designed an experience for educators and other adults seeking to answer these deep important questions (the work applies to all professionals and ordinary seekers). A direct result of their individual journeys should be human persons with more deeply rooted convictions who are then able to live by professional codes as they apply their broader “whole-life moral beliefs and understandings” to those moments of truth. Over the course of years, the dispositions become habits and habits become character and that should be the ultimate goal, forming professionals of good will who are inclined toward the good in their thoughts and actions across the various settings in their lives. Those will be the carriers and guardians of ethical behavior in their respective worlds. My sense is that most adults are craving this kind of self and communal examination and awakening.
If the approach to professional ethics concentrates on right vs. wrong exclusively within the context of the professional setting and professional decision making, it will come up short. If the approach allows for time to cultivate one’s stance toward goodness, flourishing and meaning as a whole human being first and that person is allowed to shift the way they see the world through a moral lens, that is keenly interesting and vitally important work, that I believe will result in developing moral/ethical adults.
Further Thoughts on Ethical Development for Professionals
Literature, music, theatre and art have long been used in graduate schools and executive education programs to broaden the content and learning modalities available to course designers and instructors. Theory of Reasoned Action vs. Theory of Deliberate Practice; Shift into right brain (whole brain) must
be considered.