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Do you consider your personal ethics?

A friend of mine has taken a ethics officer role at a place I used to work. We had a conversation another day about ethics, and in the process of that conversation, I posted a question on MyLot that resulted in my finalizing and codifying my definition of ethics. First, of ethics are a slippery slope. The minute we justify to ourselves that we don’t need to strictly follow our ethics the good reality is we just rewrote our ethics. Look the first thing is it is your ethics. No matter I believe or I think, or he thinks, or she thinks they are your ethics. How you apply your ethics, however, may determine how other people consider you as a person. Let’s for a moment take a contest. If the rules of the contest are set and you join, then you should do your best to live up to the stated rules. Cutting the edge of the rules is wrong. What happens when someone points that out to you? If you say, sorry your right, then you are well on an ethical path. Anything else and well everyone else has to question your goals.

The other side that my friend and I discussed was the reality of fake. A fake person is someone that posts in a specific forum in a specific way. The example my friend gave was related to two internal forums at my old company. My example was someone that posts on a blogging site with positive blogs and occasional snarky comments, but moving to a Facebook group only posts negative comments. We talked about the various levels in my old company and the impact of one of the people in the levels doing something like that. We talked about the impact of a Director or VP doing that. In my example, I talked about the reality of the tops posters on a site doing that. In both cases, the responsibility caused the impact not to be simply that they shouldn’t have, but rather it became to us, an example of what my friend calls “squishy ethics.”

We didn’t get into the honesty of posting and sharing. That is a conversation for the future. We simply pointed out the incongruity between positive in one place and negative in another. Mix into that the reality of authority, be it actual or simply position and you can see why slippery ethics are a bad thing. Someone that allows themselves to modify rules once something is placed is bad. Someone being duplicitous (positive one place negative another) is dangerous. What the perception of that person gets further altered by status. Senior company professionals, top-ranked people on a site have a serious responsibility to convey a consistent message. If someone works and something doesn’t work, they need to convey both.

Why do ethics matter?

  • Question of

    Do duplicitous people make you nervous?

    • Yes
    • No
  • Question of

    Do you ignore people that act one way on one site and a completely different way on another?

    • Yes
    • No
  • Question of

    Do you feel that honesty is slowly slipping away?

    • Yes
    • No
  • Question of

    Do you try and help people play by the rules?

    • Yes
    • No

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What do you think?

Written by DocAndersen

One fan, One team and a long time dream Go Cubs!!!!!!!!!!!!!

23 Comments

  1. I do not feel disturbed by the attitude or ethics of others, so I also never intended to ignore others. Basically, I just don’t want to be a judge of anyone. It’s just that considering we have limited time, then I will definitely give priority to those who I feel are more credible, interactive, able and willing to be invited to share thoughts, knowledge, or perspectives.

    One thing, it is good that there is person like you here to become a mouthpiece of ethics and signs and at once exemplary from a senior executive.

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  2. A lot of people are double minded people. They have one rule for others and another for themselves.
    The fact is, no one can make a person honest, they have to choose to be honest with themselves.
    In a way, the moment anyone says even a white lie, they not only lie to the other person but they also lie to themselves.
    Honesty is the best policy is best most of all because it is simple. A Yes or No and then there are no games, no falseness and no pretence.

    No for me, my responsibility is to be true to myself first and to others next. To live with compassion and reality. It is often a differcult balance and choice.

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  3. The more I participate on a site the more I develop a hard shell. Because I tend to be authentically me it is hard when people don’t seem to respect that people are different and still need to be appreciated. My mom loved me dearly and was quick to point out my faults followed by a sincere I love you. I appreciated that.

    I say what I mean and it often gets me in trouble. Occasionally I get involved with the wrong crowd and end up joining in with things I am not proud of and then have to fix.

    I am far, far, far from perfect and I am always me.

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    • wow. That is an open and wonderful way to approach the world. You’ve impressed me many times over the last couple of years reading your posts, you just impressed me a whole lot more with this comment!

  4. I answered #1 and #2 with no and left the other two questions unanswered. Why no? I do not know but my brain has this habit of just taking in whatever the other person say if I feel it will do me no harm in any way. So whether a person is honest or dishonest does not scare me because, bottomline, I still control my action or reaction towards that person. That is, whether I will let his/her opinion sway me.

    The last two I did not answer because I feel it is a matter which every individual has to deal with personally. If, say, someone promise a thing but did not keep it, my point is that he or she is fooling him/herself, not me.

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