welcome to this tutorial in business ethics I'm uh John hooker I'm on the faculty of the teer School of Business at carneg melon University and I'm here to tell you a little bit about how to analyze an issue in business ethics that's the approach I'm going to take now people come to an ethics class with many different expectations so what can you expect from me I'm going to present to you a framework for analyzing an ethical issue that's based on the idea that an ethical choice is a rational Choice a logical Choice by rational I don't necessarily mean rational self-interest rational choice is a broader idea than that you may ask how so well stay tuned and I'm going to provide you a number of real life case studies in which we'll apply these ideas to get some practice practice practice because that's how you learn okay so here's the outline I'm going to begin by saying something about why we have ethics what's it for and get past some misconceptions we have about the field get in our way then I'm going to present to you 23 centuries of ethical thought in about 45 minutes in two sessions so wish me luck then after that the fund begins I'm going to show you how to apply these ideas to real life dilemmas that's the plan to begin with why do we have ethics let me say it first that I'm not here to convince you to be ethical that's not my job that's not the job of Ethics I'm going to assume that you want want to be ethical it's the same if you go to finance class for example if you go to finance class the instructor doesn't try to convince you to make money the instructor assumes you want to make money and tries to tell you how now there is this idea out there that people act in their self-interest people don't really want to be ethical necessarily uh this is a very popular view but I have to tell you it's false in fact there's a great deal of evidence now from the scientific world that shows that human beings are altruistic it's in our DNA it turns out that the human species is a stronger species if we help each other out also I understand that we have in our brains these mirror neurons that respond to other people's feelings so if we see someone who's in pain or who's joyous the same neurons fire in our own brains this is empathy it's part of what makes us human so what ethics does is to take this natural tendency we have to care about people and put it on a rational basis so it can work in the real world now as this idea that human beings are self-interested only we only care about ourselves you know we often attribute that idea to Adam Smith okay isn't he the guy who said that in a successful economic system everyone should pursue his own selfish interest and it works out for the betterment of all as though Guided by invisible hand well this ironically would attribute this view to Adam Smith because he staked his career on precisely the opposite view he wrote a whole book called the theory of moral sentiments in which he argued that human beings are motivated by empathy as well as self-interest the very first sentence of that book states that proposition and he spends the rest of the book trying to defend it now he did write a book called The Wealth of Nations and which he talks about the invisible hand and he says yes self-interest is an important engine for an economic system system but he also says self-interest is a danger to an economic system his remedy was government regulation I'm not necessarily agreeing with him but that's what he said and in fact as soon as he finished writing the book he quit his job as an academic at the University of Glasgow and became a government regulator so that's Adam Smith it wasn't his idea either it goes back a long way there's this guy M or minus as we say who was a disciple of confucious this is more 2,000 years ago he argued that human beings are altruistic by nature in fact he used the the following example suppose you're walking down the street and you see a a young child about to fall into a deep pit and you decide what should I do about this well what do you do do you think it over say well you know if I walk past someone may see me ignore the child they may get in trouble or if I try to save the child I may be late for my next meeting no you don't do that you rush over and save the child it's just part of who we are as human beings that was his argument now what is the job of Ethics well I mentioned it's to put this natural tendency we have to care about people on a rational basis it builds rational consensus as to how we're going to take care of each other and live together in a harmonious way we have to agree on the ground rules to get anything done we have to have prior agreement now you may think well why can't we just take a vote on how we're going to do things well suppose we take a vote do we agree that we should abide by the vote well maybe we should take a vote as to whether we're going to abide by the result of the vote well what counts as majority rule 51% 2/3 should we take a vote on that so what counts as a majority rule for that vote well you see the infinite regress at some point we have to have a prior understanding as to how we're going to live together this is what ethics is for to generate this rational consensus as to how we live together now we often think it's really the law enforcement system that makes Society work right ethics is nice it's nice to be ethical but the really dirty work is done by law enforcement to keep us in line actually it's just the opposite it's just the opposite so think about it suppose that tomorrow morning everyone in town started running red lights what can the police do about this are they going to have a cruiser station that every intersection in the city well how many intersections well there's thousands of them not nearly enough police okay they're going to have cameras to photograph everyone Running Red Lights what are they going to do with those images are they going to send a citation to 500,000 people and collect the finds every day I don't think so right so if everyone's Running Red Lights there's nothing the police can do about it or supposed tonight everyone starts breaking into apartments and houses can the police stop it can the police be everywhere at once no there's no way okay the law is there to take care of a few people on the fringes who don't get the message it's not going to work unless most of us voluntarily comply and we can't voluntarily comply unless we agree on what we ought to be doing this is why we have ethics to bring about that agreement now let me take you through some myths about ethics that get in our way the first one is that well you learn your ethics when you're a little kid now it's too late so I'm wasting your time this is absolutely wrong there's a whole field that's called developmental psychology that deals with this in this field has discovered that people become more ethical as we become more mature in general as our cognitive ability increases our ethics increases in fact I edit a journal and one of the members of my board has found in research that successful leaders are better at ethical reasoning than the average person because they've reached that level of maturity where they know how to take into account everyone's point of view and come to a resolution so we actually grow ethically as we grow in other ways this guy Lawrence Colberg asserts that you continue to grow ethically even to your 60s it's a lifelong process and ethical instruction and training is part of that process so so much for that myth another one myth number two sitting in class doesn't change anyone's beh Behavior it's incentives out there that change Behavior we're wasting our time sitting in class well if that's true let's shut down the business school right why are we sitting in class in this building it's because we believe that learning something will change your behavior because you'll learn how to accomplish your goals it's the same in ethics same thing myth number three I hear this a lot from academics okay we already know what's right it's obvious what you shouldn't be doing what you should be doing it's just a matter of doing it okay so we don't need to waste our time talking about ethics we already know what we should be doing if that's true then why do we disagree all the time in fact every single issue I present to a group people disagree over every single one Well it can't be obvious if we all disagree right it's not obvious in many cases now the big one myth number four this is the hardest one to deal with ethics is just a matter of opinion it's just a matter of personal values it's not like chemistry or physics there's no objectivity in this field okay it's just a matter of my values versus yours well try to remember this the next time you're mugged the mugger has his values you have yours okay or an example I sometimes use with my students you know suppose I return your essay with a c minus and you ask why did they get a c minus I thought it was good and I say well I don't like your looks and you say well that's not fair and I say well that's your opinion I have my opinion I think it's fair so I can tell you I've done ethics workshops in several countries and the US is the trickiest place in the world to this discuss ethics it's because we have this dual personality on the one hand we say we're relativists ethics is a matter of opinion and personal values but at the other hand we're the most Absolut people in the world we think that our way of life democracy free markets human rights and so forth should be everywhere and our presidents go around the world saying quote our values are Universal that's a direct quote from the last two presidents so we have this bifurcated approach roach to ethics I don't think anyone really believes that ethics is a matter of opinion but we tell ourselves that and it gets in our way ethics is not about personal values it's about interpersonal values otherwise it can't do its job remember the job of Ethics is to bring us together put us on the same page to generate rational consensus so if it's only about personal values it's not going to work it's not going to do its job that's why it has to be inter personal this is the way that Western Civilization has approached ethics for about 2300 years we build rational consensus by convincing each other that we shouldn't run red lights we shouldn't break into the houses now perhaps we haven't convinced each other we shouldn't break the speed limit okay so why do we all break the speed limit because we don't agree with it we don't think it's necessary to drive 55 mil an hour on i79 so we drive 75 mph we basically obey the laws we agree with so ethics has to bring us to agreement somehow we have a long legal tradition something called common law contract law law of torts and so forth in which we come to an agreement about what's a fair way to resolve disputes right the loser has to agree with the ground rules as well as the winner you may say well ethics is really based on religion and how can we come together on religion well if you look at the Great great religious Traditions whether it be Islam Christianity Judaism they have a long and sophisticated tradition of ethical reasoning it's been rationality based for centuries in these religions and that's helped us to come together on ethical rules what's happened to us in the meantime we've forgotten how to do this we have forgotten how to persuade each other rationally we mix our ethics with emotion and ideology and what do we get polarization we don't know how to come together anymore we've forgotten this age-old tradition of ethical reasoning so let's bring it back let's get started now oh some tips for how to approach ethics in an objective way without getting your emotions wrapped up in it first tip remember that ethics doesn't judge people it judged actions the purpose of Ethics is not to decide whether you are a good person or a bad person okay it decides whether you're about to do a good act or a bad act it gives you advice on what is the rational Choice it's a bit like a golf lesson right so if you're golf instructor tells you your wrist is a little too stiff you need to swing this way you know you don't take that personally you don't assume he's telling you that you're an inferior person because your wrist is not right he just giving you some advice about what how to do it next time this is what ethics does it's not about your worth as a person I'm not here to judge you I'm certainly not capable of it maybe there's some higher power that can judge us but ethics doesn't do that it simply tells us what to do next time so what I'm aiming for here is a kind of professional distance right you're making an investment you don't want to get your emotions wrapped up in whether it should be stocks or bonds you want to look at the evidence look at the arguments objectively that takes some discipline some training it's the same in ethics maintain that professional distance another reason we should do that is so we can be leaders you know leadership is to a great extent building consensus getting everyone on the same page moving in the same direction this is exactly what ethics does remember rational consensus so leadership and ethics are very closely connected and it's not going to work unless we can maintain distance from the issue so us to see everyone's point of view and put it all together finally you got to know how to do it you got to know how to analyze the ethical issues so that is what we're going to start doing in the next session thank you very much