Right or wrong? The challenges of making ethical choices

Summary

In this episode of The Search Bar, Anne Hornak, professor of higher education at Central Michigan University sits down with Adam Sparkes to discuss the ins and outs of making decisions with an ethical mindset. The two talk about what influences our choices, ethical dilemmas we face every day, and some of the challenges we face in making ethical choices.

Chapters 

• 00:00 Introduction
• 01:56 What is ethical decision-making?
• 05:44 What are some hypothetical ethical quandaries?
• 07:45 What are some ethical pitfalls that we experienced from the pandemic?
• 14:55 How do you approach decision-making ethically and why is it important?
• 19:56 How can leaders foster ethical decision-making within their organizations?
• 26:34 If you see something unethical, how do you go about reporting it?
• 32:03 How can individuals reflect on their own moral blind spots or biases when making decisions?
• 35:45 How is ethical decision-making evolving in today's hyperconnected digital world? 

Introduction

What is ethical decision-making?

Adam: Because I do think, one of the things that leads to ethical decision-making is going into that decision-making, realizing that you could be wrong. And I think that's probably the hardest thing for people. I know. I'm in my forties now, I never really thought about that much until recent years where it's like, “am I open to being completely wrong about something that I think is ethical and needs to be implemented or needs to be valued?” How do people, I think that's a trick, it's a skill you have to learn. How do you do that?

Anne: Well, I think good ethical leaders can show weakness and vulnerability and still be strong. So I think we have this narrative around what does it mean to be a leader? And strength is always...we can't show weakness. We can't show vulnerability. And I actually think some of our most ethical leaders will get on a platform and say, I was wrong. That was the wrong decision to make. I mean, we're not going to get into politics, but think of all the presidents who made really bad decisions in their legacy, in their time in office that had so many consequences that have been detrimental to. If it had been done differently. I mean, we can't play out like, “oh, it looks like this.” We can't revise this. And like you said, revisionist history...

Adam: Back to the future.

Anne: But often, I mean, have we heard some of these presidents come out and say, “I was really wrong. That was just a really bad decision.”

Adam: It’s almost an absolute no in politics.

Anne: Because it’s a sign of weakness. Whereas I think people who operate from...have really strong moral foundation and values and confidence in their decisions because they know that the information they had at that time was good, can say, “I was wrong. It's okay, I'm going to change course. I created this.” We don't create space for that. We don't create space for any sort of perceived weakness or vulnerability. When I actually think that it's strength, that's a superpower to say that this is...

Adam: Own it. Own it and improve it, that sort of thing. So why is that important? Having more people who are able to bring themselves through that ethical decision making process or bring it to organizations where the, where's the value gain for us there?

Anne: The value gain is I think we get more transparency. So, we have more people who are involved in decision-making. I always preach this to my students is we don't make ethical decisions in vacuums. So, the President doesn't sit in Warriner Hall and make a big ethical decision without-I hope not-without consulting, trusted people both on and off campus. Good leaders have this sphere of influence of people that help guide them, that they believe in, that challenge them. So, there's great importance of having people that have diverse ideas and thoughts and say, “Hey, no, this isn't, that's so off base. Think about it this way.” And that's super important because it leads to transparency. So, when we can see why decisions were made, it also breeds confidence in our leaders. It creates a culture of trust. It just creates goodwill and people want to be part of something like that. So, this is a big one in higher ed because leadership changes so often. I think the average college presidency was what, two to three years? And sometimes there goes the cabinet, too. And I mean, this is an interesting time at CMU because we're not fully interim U, but we have a lot of interim leaders on the cabinet right now. And what happens is that as an institutional knowledge leaves, We have individuals come in Trump spots. So I have to keep the ship afloat and keep moving forward, but there's no time to study. What am I actually supposed to be doing? What are some decisions that were made that I still have to implement? Because it's not like it's a blank canvas and those things get missed, and that's when institutions really get into trouble in terms of ethics is oh, “that was like four administrators ago, had this conversation. It was written down, it was filed away.” And I mean, you can note time after time of these decisions and I could sit here and cite institutions. I'm not going to, but that this has happened to. So, our legacy issues are and longevity, but the work is hard.

How can leaders foster ethical decision-making within their organizations?

Adam: What are some ways that folks can make ethical decisions when they're faced with future problems?

Anne: So, I think as an organization, as an institution, we have to create a culture of ethics. So one is talking about it, giving individuals opportunities and I mean leadership to everyone. So did you do your ethics training for this semester?

Adam: I have not done it yet.

Anne: Yeah. When will you do it?

Adam: When the busiest parts of the semester slow down.

Anne: Well, no, there is, I'm joking. There is no. We take Title ix, which I know had ethics. We do our fire safety training. We are going to have some new equity, inclusion training that's coming out, which, so maybe besides the fire, lots of this is reactive. We could do, if we think about “how do we create a culture of ethics at an institution?” is putting this, it's part of onboarding, it's integrated into all that we do to prepare people to do their jobs from the custodian to the university president. We're all faced with ethical decisions. Maybe not daily, but probably daily. We're all making decisions based on things we see, things, we hear situations that we're in, things I read in my students' papers. We're all responsible employees, so what does that mean? Does everybody have clarity on what does it mean to keep our students safe? What does it mean to keep our students healthy and in safe environments? Those are all embedded in this work and super important. I don't know that it's on the fore always on our mind. When faced with it, we respond. We're probably pretty clunky at it. And I go back to what I said earlier about, we're really good with the legal side. We're really good. We're going to hone a statement. We're going to run it through legal counsel, university counsel to make sure that it is solid and foolproof. We do this with contracts. We're not putting the university in jeopardy legally. When do we have that same review of are we putting the university in jeopardy ethically? We're not good at that. We don't create those situations. We also have, and this is inherent in most universities, a reporting structure that's probably wrought with conflict of interest. It's wrought with different reporting structures. We talk about this a lot in our classes because we prepare student affairs educators to be student affairs educators. Well, there's lots of people that get hired without a master's degree and then they get to an institution and because of the benefits, seek a master's degree. Well, they could be one step away from being a supervisor or have a supervisor/supervisee relationship in class. We've had this before. Or in the residence halls a really good example is, you are a resident assistant as an undergrad, and then you get hired as a resident director as a grad. And you are literally six months away from graduating having lived with these individuals and now you have some authority and some power over these individuals. Have you explored all those relationships? Talked about those? Talked about the dimensions of that and what that might look like, set boundaries. These are all the ways that we can be forward facing in this and just it's part of our work. These are conversations we have. It's part of onboarding.

Adam: Yeah, I think that's really interesting because it's that idea of going from being an RA to an RHD is kind of an interesting one just because it's a common path for people who are in education administration. A lot of folks who work at colleges, for those who don't know, so many of them, my first job was RHD. That is super common path. There are people here who are way up the chain who started as RHDs because it's a great position to get in and learn how to do some of this stuff. But if you start doing it when you're 25 and you were just living there in the same building sometimes two years ago, have you went and done? And I want to be clear, we're not insinuating, there's a ton of problems that are popping up from this, but the moral and the ethical exercise is interesting because going back to that, the morals that you sort of just gain in life without logic, it's hard to go, these aren't my peers anymore. Because usually you'll just see people as your peer group and you behave and interact with them in a certain way, probably because it's uncomfortable to detach yourself from that. And how do I detach myself but, still maintain some of the personal relationships I have or the value that I bring those relationships but create the structure and the distance that's required for me to maybe give people bad news or tell them what the rules are. I think that's a relatable space to put it. I was thinking when you're saying it, a little bit about attorney-client privilege. Which there's this space for, and I'm sure I'm using this because everyone's familiar with it, where you may have a client that has done something and has told you they've done something that is morally abhorrent or even illegal. But as an attorney, your ethics are that that is privileged information. That's kind of the most, I think well-known and extreme example. But this happens all the time. And the question you sort of start to have is, “am I a bad person for not reporting this? Can I continue to be an attorney?” These are the ethics that you have to build into that position. I have a client who's on trial for murder. They told me I did do the murder, but I'm pleading not guilty. What do you do? Because the ethics of that job is that you give them a defense anyway.

Anne: What are the limits?

Adam: For yourself. That's why don't be an attorney. Sorry, pre-law people. I couldn't do it.

If you see something unethical, how do you go about reporting it?

Anne: The other thing with university administration that's so interesting related to ethics is we really don't have good reporting structures. So if I sense, Adam, that you are operating in an unethical way, we're all in different disciplines, so I'm going to take faculty and you're in communications and journalism, and yes, you have journalistic ethics and I'm in higher ed, where would I report that? I mean, we used to have an ethics hotline that was, I don't even know if this exists at the university anymore, that someone could kind of report an unethical action and then it would be investigated from an outside unbiased perspective. In higher education go back to our residence hall example is, and that's not unethical in and of itself. A dual relationship is just not unethical in and of itself, but an unmanageable dual relationship is. But if we sense that the RHD was not putting up boundaries, not protecting, not actually doing their job related to students and protecting students and creating a safe space and a space where students feel like they belong and maybe having relations with residents, which is really unethical. We have no reporting structure for that. Some of the professional organizations have an ethics board, but they don't have any power to then call CMU and say, or UofM or MSU and say, “Hey, Ann is X, Y, and Z.” Will that happen? So even the way that we report, we're not the American Bar Association or the American Medical Association because many of us aren't licensed. So there's the retributions of that outside of social workers, teachers. So that also, I think, makes it really tricky is what are the consequences? How do we check unethical behavior and make sure that we're aligned in those ways?

Adam: Yeah. I think you're onto something that's interesting there too, which is that when you see unethical behavior or you're trying to process maybe something adversely, something that is ethical but you don't really like, but maybe you understand the logic behind and why the decision had to be made is how do you choose to react or how do you choose to report, right. And that's a tough thing too because we were talking off camera about situations where victims of crimes and things may not report them because there's moral gray area in them being a victim. Not that I'm assigning to them. They may be assigning to themselves or society or societal organizational pressures that they have may assign to them. And to step it back from crime, victims of crimes, if you're just in an uncomfortable situation or you're viewing behavior that you feel like isn't serving the ethics of the institution, Hey, I thought we all agreed that we, again, using university as an example, not this is happening all the time. “I don't think that what you're doing is serving students fair. Well, I think this is the selfish behavior.” It is tough to know where to go with it. And then if I say that, then do I put myself under some sort of a review for having said it? I mean, that goes into a whole lot of other stuff where...why whistleblower policies and laws should exist in organizations and in societies, but it's tough.

Anne: And then think about your longevity at the institution. So we're all in different positions and with different kind of levels of real and perceived influence or authority or...

Adam: I got a microphone. I have so much authority.

Anne: Power.

Adam: It's perceived power only.

Anne: So, depending on where you're at in the organization, that can also complicate this is where do I go with this? Am I going to lose my job? What are going to be, what might be, what if I'm wrong? What if I didn't see what I, didn't hear what I thought I heard? I only heard part of it? How do I, I think part of what we think about in terms of ethics is, you are not the investigator. So, we have to have reporting structures where there's an opportunity for an investigation. So, OCRIE serves in that way related to Title IX. We should be able to turn it over to OCRIE or the Title IX office, compliance office and then trust that that is going to, there's going to be an investigation. But it doesn't always mean that someone's going to call you up and say, “Hey, Adam, we did an investigation and this is what we found.” I mean, that's unsettling for people too. We have to learn to say, “I did everything that I could to protect this individual, and maybe it was a big nothing burger.” You don't know.

Adam: Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, again, going back to that idea of I could be wrong. Sometimes you could be, I mean, seeing something that seems fishy isn't always an indicator that something's off.

How can individuals reflect on their own moral blind spots or biases when making decisions?

Adam: Which kind of brings me to my next question, which is moral blind spots. How do you challenge your own moral blind spots? Is there an exercise you can do to identify it? I feel like that's also another one of those really interesting things. Like earlier when I was mentioning, might I be wrong? Well, if I might be wrong, what is it? Am I admitting to myself what might be influencing me to perceive something inaccurately?

Anne: Yeah, there's actually some really good unconscious bias training that I would recommend to everyone, which relates to beginning to identify your blind spots, usually related to identities, others' identities, and it kind of goes on some of our own privileges. So, when we have privileges in areas of our identity, I identify as a white person, I have white privilege. What does that mean? What does that mean in terms of my blinders and what I don't see? Because some things are just so normal to me in the way that I identify. So, I have to work harder to kind of see some of these maybe injustices or unethical things because I've never lived that. Gender is another one that if we start doing some of this work related to unconscious bias, I think it begins to, we'll never get rid of our blinders. We're always going to have blinders, but we begin to address those. Like say, okay, what am I not seeing here? But it also goes, to go back to one of your earlier questions about ethical decision making and I talked about teams and having consults is. So if you ever go through any counseling, training programs or social work is one of the things that we talk a lot about. I have a master's degree. Counseling is consult, consult, consult. We always consult. So, the most ethical leaders are deliberative in their processes. They're deliberative and very intentional about who they surround themselves with. Not just physically in a cabinet or on campus, but their trusted sources are people that will say, “Hey, Adam, you have huge, take those glasses off. You can't see this. You're not seeing this.” And you're like, “wow, I totally missed that.”

Adam: Yeah, it's getting that mentorship that isn't from your world perspective, maybe that can sort of help out. Yeah, I think that's tough. There's a content creator online that I enjoy. It's an entertainment person and woman. I was watching a video that she posted last night, and she made this statement that I thought was really prolific and kind of sad, but it was something that I couldn't relate to. It was about being a woman. And she said that to exist as a woman is a prison at some point always. And she went on to pontificate about it, and I won't repeat it poorly at this point, but man, I sat with that for a minute and I was sitting in the room and I had just watched this 1:30 second video, and my wife and my daughter were watching TV and family room, and I was just looking at them, and I was like, I'll never feel that way. But I'm sort of glad that I just heard that because it was in sort of a casual context. It was talking about just the film industry and stuff, and it was in relation to a movie. This is a movie content creator that I enjoy. And I was like, wow, hopefully I gained something out of that that I'll hold onto. But to have that statement, I think it's easy for a lot of people to react and go, that's pretty melodramatic. And it was intended to be dramatic, but also if you're not there,

Anne: When was the last time you dealt with that?

Adam: Or even tried to think about it from that point of view.

How is ethical decision-making evolving in today's hyperconnected digital world?

Adam: And that brings me to another thing that I think is interesting, which is the digital landscape affecting these things. How do we build our ethics and how is that affected by the perpetual online-ness of all of us? But the more perpetual online-ness that we're seeing, the younger and younger folks, well, they don't get younger, they get older, but as more generations come up, they're online more and more. And again, trying to be ethical, I'm not trying to say that me having been online much less than my kids, gives me some leg up, but it is going to be different for them as they gain that information and build those ethics.

Anne: We could never stay on top of all of this. Just think about AI. I think for a time we've tried to fight some of this technology and the forward-thinking of technology, and I think we're going to have to partner in how do we use technology as a tool and how do we help individuals, and I don't mean just students, but if we're talking about students is, how do we help them understand the legitimacy, the role of technology in their lives? And I think digital media literacy is really, really important. And I think in some ways we're actually doing a pretty good job of trying to address the ethics of AI and the role of AI. Well, it's just cheating differently. That's how we think of AI in the classroom.

Adam: It's the paper writer when you're on the faculty side.

Anne: Yeah, I mean, come on. Students haven't been doing academic dishonesty for centuries. I mean, it's just now more readily available at their fingertips. But how do we partner with that? How do we say it can be a tool, not the tool and help students think about, and I think even administrators, and I mean now we're reading about college presidents that are getting in trouble for just full-on AI statements. And so, I don't know what the line will be because the technology is so, so powerful. I do think we have to do a better job of helping our students be good consumers of the vitriol and sort of the attacks on online. I don't know how to do that. I'm not an expert in this area, but I do think there's a lot of ways that we can protect our students in those, at least educating them. We can't stop them from what they're doing because they are adults.

Adam: Well, it's hard because it's easy to get addicted to negative information. I think I've talked to my own students here about a similar thing where it's like, you might be really worked up about something, and I agree with you about the issue or the thing that you're worked up about. We're on the same page, but I'm worried about how worked up you are right now. Because sometimes you need a little less information. I think there is some truth to, and my kids are better at this than I ever was, but there's so much information to process, and it puts so much worry and burden on you that sometimes finding a good way, and I'm not saying get off social media, that's never going to happen. And having that attitude I think is probably not productive for those of us who are a little older to a younger generation, but finding better ways to make your usage tenable and healthy for you. And I'm certainly guilty of doom-scrolling too. I am not saying this from a place of somebody who's like, I've never let what I see on my social feeds stress me out, but I do know that when I step away from it, even though some of these problems might be real, they remain real. The severity of them flattens out. And I think when you're ingesting that all the time, there's sort of a tendency to go, well, now you're closing your eyes to the problems and you're part of the problem. Well, you have to ask yourself again, here's the ethical dilemma. Am I becoming part of the problem by not consuming much of it, or am I making the ethical decision to protect myself. Because maybe it's a red flag and it really only needs to be a yellow flag, but you don't know because you're consuming so much of this thing that kind of gets you worked up. I think that's hard. How do you have a balance of that?

Anne: So hard. Well, I think part of it is, how do we help people be good consumers of that? I mean, I don't think doom scrolling just in and of itself, is unethical. I mean, we all do it, but how we're getting information, and I think that can be kind of dangerous. So, we do a really good job of talking about relationships, so healthy relationships, toxic relationships, and students. Go back to a statement you said long, long time ago, and this is-long, long time ago-was when we were growing up, we probably were told how we would worship on the weekends. We heard lots probably around politics at the kitchen table with family, extended family, friends, community. So, think about it. Our students come to us with all these ideas about, this is the way I'm going to vote. This is how I'm going to worship. And then all of a sudden, they're like, “wait, this doesn't work for me. This just doesn't work for me.” And they're starting to shed some of that. We do a pretty good job at the university of helping them navigate that. Not indoctrinating them to something different, but saying, “okay, talk more about why this doesn't work. What are some other ways you think you could worship if you want or not?” We expose students to all kinds of different political ways of thinking, or we try to, I mean, we have the tools to do that. We don't do a good job with the technology pieces. How do we be good consumers of, be good critics of, and also help us. It can be healthy. You can have a healthy relationship with technology. You can have a healthy relationship, healthy relationships. That's what we want. So how do we create that within some sort of...

Adam: Yeah, it's sort of that big wild quandary. I remember seeing, I saw a little thing online recently where somebody was showing the history of people saying, no one wants to work anymore. And it went all the way back like 160 years, and it's sort of, usually we think we're engaging with a new problem, and young people a lot of times kind of get the brunt of that. But the reality of it is, is that we've been asking ourselves these same questions about people's motivations for a long time. We're always afraid the next generation's going to ruin the earth, but I think if we step back from it and we look at it, we've all contributed to its demise and to its grandeur...

Anne: And the world's sort of like a pendulum. We were having some of these conversations in the 1900’s and, oh, the pendulum is swinging this way, and we...absolutely, yeah. So I always think about this when I think about ethics is because we live in such a polarizing world and we're talking about technology, and it's the information that our students are just inundated with and us as people, as university people, and we have moved so far away from opportunities to have a constructive deliberative debate. It becomes personal, and this is where I think we really need to educate our students online is if you—I'm not on Facebook—but I know that I've seen comments on Facebook and it's like, “oh, you're so not smart for saying that and you must be,” it's these personal attacks

Adam: That’s a very polite way to put it.

Anne: That was my really nice, yeah. Those are personal attacks about an idea that you have about the economy or whatever, voting rights, and it becomes personal, and we've moved away from that deliberative debate, and these are ethical quandaries. How have we moved so far away from, “if you don't believe in me, I can no longer talk to you,” or, “oh, I'm not going to talk to you through this election season.” I mean, those are the things that keep me up at night and why our students are...

Adam: It feels like we've stripped the ethics out of it and just went to emotion reactions to guide us. 

Anne: Yes, and personal, those blinders and yeah.

Adam: Well, hopefully we can continue the good work of bringing those ethics to people so they can make those decisions. This has been super fun conversation.

Anne: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah…

Adam: I think we've done it.

Anne: Yeah.

Adam: Thanks for coming in.

Anne: Thanks for having me. It was great fun on this nice morning.

Adam: Yeah, right. We'll pretend it's not raining. Thanks for stopping by the search bar. Make sure that you like and subscribe so that you don't have to search for the next episode.