When is a Decision an Ethical One?

By Linda Fisher Thornton

As we make leadership decisions, do we actively think about which ones are “ethical” decisions? Do we recognize the “ethical” decisions easily? Complying with laws and ethics codes clearly has ethical implications. But what about day-to-day decisions like these?

1. “Who should we promote to a leadership position?
2. “What kind of paper should we buy?”
3. “Which suppliers should we choose?”

These questions may seem routine, but they also have ethical implications. Let’s look at some of the ethical issues that we need to pay attention to when making these three decisions:

1. “Who should we promote to a leadership position?”  What are some of the ethical issues that we need to consider?

• We should only reward ethical behavior during the promotion process.
• We should only promote ethical employees to leadership positions, so that they can model the behavior that we want employees to use.
• We should choose someone to promote who knows how to balance the needs of multiple stakeholders.
• We should promote someone who uses respectful interpersonal behavior and knows how to build trust, so that they can help us build an ethical culture.

2. “What kind of paper should we buy?”  What are some of the ethical issues that we need to consider?

• Should we buy recycled or partly recycled paper to reduce our environmental impact?
• If we don’t use recycled paper, is the paper we choose sustainably harvested?
• How does our choice need to support the sustainability goals of our organization?

3. “Which supplier should we choose?”  What are some of the ethical issues that we need to consider?

• Does each supplier that we are considering use fair labor and honor human rights?
• Does each supplier that we are considering use sustainable business practices and minimize environmental impact?
• Does each supplier that we are considering demonstrate transparency about leadership practices?

The ethical issues listed above are only a sampling of the kinds of ethical issues involved in making these three decisions. Choosing suppliers, for example, requires checking reputation in more areas than just the ones mentioned here.

Ethical leadership in a global society incorporates so many broad elements of responsibility that most of our decisions will touch at least one of them. “Ethical” isn’t just a kind of decision-making. It is the way we need to think about all of our choices,  today and every day.

For more, see Linda’s book 7 Lenses and the 21 Question Assessment: How Current is My Message About Ethics?

© 2013 Leading in Context LLC