USING PERSONAL VALUES

There is little doubt that personal values and selection of ethical principles to use for decision-making are just that ”personal. In fact, I had contributed in no small way to his way of thinking because one of the early assignments that the students had to complete for this course was the development of a personal code of ethics and a document explaining their thought process in developing it.

This proved to be a very valuable exercise, according to the students. Almost to a person, they said that whereas they believed they had a fairly strong code of ethics to which they adhered, they had never actually thought about that code of behaviour in a systematic way. For example, they had never considered the specific values they held dear, nor their reasons for giving these values such high regard. The requirement to develop this code for a mark forced them into a very self-reflective mode.

So, for each of us, we have that personal code ”whether or not we've ever taken the time to write it down ”that guides our decision-making. Can it be relied upon?

Marshall Pittman and Robin Radtke, professors in the Department of Accounting at the University of Texas at San Antonio, conducted a study to determine whether employees use their personal codes or the organizational ethics codes for decision-making. ^{[ 5]} The researchers found that most employees indicated that they have their own strong codes of ethics and used that to guide their decisions. A good thing? Not really. When Pittman and Radtke asked these same employees ethical questions, many of them responded to the situations in a ˜less than ethical fashion.

What the results of this study said to me was that this student wasn't unlike many (perhaps most) people in the workplace today. Further, I realized that there was little I could do to change his mind. Personal ethical standards are deep-seated.

^{[ 5]} Pitman, Marshall and Radtke, Robin [accessed 26 June 2001]. http://accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aaa/2002annual/cpe/cpe3/tue3.pdf