Ethical Decision Making

Being a leader involves many things, and one of those ambiguous “things” would be making sure one is ethical. There is some controversy regarding ethicality. Many hold that to be a good leader, or even a leader at all, one must be ethical. That brings up the problem of Hitler. Many would claim he was a leader, a great leader in fact. However, he was not ethical in the least. So, is he considered a leader or no? A problem, I see. To address this issue of making sure a leader is making ethical decisions, Kitchener developed a framework of five principles. These principles are: respecting autonomy (which is not unrestricted freedom, but providing leaders and members freedom of choice), doing no harm (which includes psychological and physical freedom from harm to others , refraining from harming others), benefiting others (which means is the decision good for the whole, growth of the group, and it promotes what is good for the organization and others outside the organization), being just (fairness and equality) and being faithful (which is premised on relationships and trust, keeps promises). These principles can be applied to even the most obscure scenario. For instance, back in high school (I talk about high school a lot, sigh..) I was the president of a club that talked about politics. I made the decision to get us involved in orchestrating a mock election (back when the presidential election was going on, real-time). Looking back, my decision fell in line with the principles. My proposal respected autonomy because no one (club members included) had to participate. It did no harm, it was simply a fun survey. It benefited the club because it spread the word about it, but it also helped the wider school community because it opened their eyes (slightly) to politics (assuming that’s a good thing). It was just because it was a fair, uncorrupt election. And it was faithful , because we promised to release the results, which we did.

Another issue relating to ethical decision making is the case of ethical luck, or moral luck. That is, when a leader makes a decision that is not ethical, but the end result ends up being ethical and beneficial to the wider community and those involved. Here’s an instance in my life (or actually a friend’s life, since I don’t think I’ve ever had moral luck): A friend of mine wanted to bolster her college application, since she did few extra-curricular activities and in general had nothing on her resume to make her stand out when it came to the selection process. An easy, quick way to make herself look better was to do community service. So, she ended up doing lots of community service , with her intentions being entirely selfish and unethical; it was only to look good. But she did a lot to help the community, and they commended her for it.