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SFU Research Ethics user registration site
Image by jean djinni
what’s wrong with this picture? The first person to answer correctly gets a free chin-wag w/yours truly about data collection ethics (includes coffee and croissant) 
The Cod of Ethics
Image by Ahniwa
See: friendfeed.com/lsw/4ad34a8d/inspired-by-this-thread
Original fish here: www.photolib.noaa.gov/htmls/figb0314.htm
Coffee Ethic
Image by nathanborror
Coffee didn’t blow me away, it was PT’s. Latte was weak. Atmosphere was pretty good, loved the library next door and the chairs are comfortable.
Being A Successful Leader Using Ethical Decision Making – Artur Victoria Research And Studies
Being a leader you have to train your skills on decision making.
Because of my extended experience I can help giving these reflection topics. I am available to develop any special need for you
This would focus on:
Looking at some established models of ethical decision making;
Examining and discussing cases/scenarios involving individual ethical dilemmas
Examining the issue of Conflict of Interest from an ethical perspective
Discussing organizational ethical climate as a factor in ethical decision making
Ethical Checklists
Example I: 12 Questions to ask yourself
1.Have you defined the problem accurately?
2.How would you define the problem if you stood on the other side of the fence?
3.How did this situation occur in the first place?
4.To whom and to what do you give your loyalty as a person and as a member of the corporation?
5.What is your intention in making this decision?
6.How does this intention compare with the probable results?
7.Whom could your decision or action injure?
8.Can you discuss the problem with the affected parties before you make your decision?
9.Could you disclose without qualm your decision or action to your boss, your CEO, the board of directors, your family, society as a whole?
10.Are you confident that your position will be as valid over a long period of time as it seems now?
11.What is the symbolic potential of your action if understood? misunderstood?
12.Under what conditions would you allow exceptions to your stand?
Collect information and identify the problem.
Be alert; be sensitive to morally charged situations: Look behind the technical requirements of your job to see the moral dimensions. Use your ethical resources to determine relevant moral standards. Use your moral intuition.
Identify what yOIl know and don’t know: While you gather information, be open to alternative interpretations of events. So within bounds of patient and institutional confidentiality, make sure that you have the perspectives of patients and families as weil as health care providers and administrators. While accuracy and thoroughness are important, there can be a trade-off between gathering more information and letting morality significant options disappear. So decisions may have to be made before the full story is known.
State the case briefly with as many of the relevant facts and circumstances as you can gather within the decision time available:
What decisions have to be made?
Who are the decision-makers?
Remember that there may be more than one decision-maker and that their interactions can be important.
Be alert to actual or potential conflict of interest situations. A conflict of interest is “a situation in which a person, such as a public official, an employee, or a professional, has a private or personal interest sufficient to appear to a reasonable person to influence the
objective exercise of his or her official duties. “These include financial and financial
conflicts of interest (e.g., favouritism to a friend or relative).
In some situations, it is sufficient to make known to all parties that you are in a conflict of interest situation. In other cases, it is essential to step out a decision-making role.
Consider the context of decision-making
1 -Ask yourself why this decision is being made in this context at this time? Are there better contexts for making this decision? Are the right decision-makers included?
Specify feasible alternatives.
2 – State the live options at each stage of decision-making for each decision-maker. You then should ask what the likely consequences are of various decisions. Here, you should remember to take into account good or bad consequences not just for yourself, your profession, organization or patients, but for all affected persons. Be honest about your own stake in particular outcomes and encourage others to do the same.
3 – Use your ethical resources to identify morally significant factors in each alternative.
Principles: What are the principles that are widely accepted in one form or another in the common moralities of many communities and organizations.
Moral models: Sometimes you will get moral insight from modelling your behaviour on a person of great moral integrity.
Use ethically informed sources: Policies and other source materials, professional norms such as institutional policies, legal precedents, and wisdom from your religious or cultural traditions.
Context: Conlextual features of the case that seem important such as the past history of relationships with various parties.
Personal judgments: Your judgments, your associates, and trusted friends or advisors can be invaluable. Of course in talking a tough decision over with others you have to respect client and employer confidentiality. Discussion with others is particularly important when other decision-makers are involved, such as, your employer, co-workers, clients, or partners.
Your professional or health care association may provide confidential advice. Experienced co-workers can be helpful. Many forward-looking health care institutions or employers have ethics committees or ombudsmen to provide advice. Discussion with a good friend or advisor can also help you by listening and offering their good advice.
Organized procedures for ethical consultation: Consider a formal case conference(s), an ethics committee, or an ethics consultant.
4. Propose and test possible resolutions.
Find the best consequences overall: Propose a resolution or select the best alternative(s), all things considered.
Perform a sensitivity analysis: Consider your choice critically: which factors would have to change to get you to alter your decision? These factors are ethically pivotal.
Consider the impact on the ethical performance of others: Think about the effect of each choice upon the choices of other responsible parties.
Are you making it easier or harder for them to do the right thing? Are you setting a good example?
Would a good person do this?: Ask yourself what would a virtuous person – one with integrity and experience – do in these circumstances?
What if everyone in these circumstances did this?: Formulate your choice as a general maxim for all similar cases?
Will this maintain trust relationships with others?: If others are in my care or otherwise dependent on me, it is impoltant that I continue to deserve their trust.
Does it still seem right?: Are you and the other decision-makers still comfortable with your choice(s)?
If you do not have consensus, revisit the process. Remember that you are not aiming at Uthe” perfect choice, but a reasonably good choice under the circumstances.
5. Make your choice.
Live with it and Learn from it: This means accepting responsibility for your choice. It also means accepting the possibility that you might be wrong or that you will make a less than optimal decision. The object is to make a good choice with the information available, not to make a perfect choice.
Learn from your failures and successes.
Accepting a gm In return for organizational favors
Peddling influence for a fee or for personal gain
Insider trading
Nepotism
“Moonlighting” (some situations)
Industrial relations activities
Often discussed in respect of “public duty” and public employee responsibility, but in fact goes to every sector of employment.
The potential benefits emanating from such a conflict can extend beyond the individual, to family members, business associates, friends etc.
Private activities as conflicts of interest
Rightly or wrongly, private activities can be seen as in conflict with organizational duty, even if not yielding monetary advantage, as potential causes of public embarrassment or diminishing
faith in tlre integrity of the individual and/or the organization.
Examples
Social and business contacts
Lifestyle “idiosyncrasies”
Behavioral predilections (sexual 7)
Activities of partners
Use of substances (alcohol, drugs 7)
Personal financial arrangements
Political or Religious affiliations
Conflicts of Interest: Issues for resolution
What should be the major focus of our concern?
Is it reasonable to require avoidance of you by employees ?
To what extent are private lives relevant to organizational life ?
What conditions need to be fulfilled to established that a C or I exists ?
Should we allow the media or public opinion to dictate what is or is not a Col ?
Is it appropriate to include spouses, family members, friends, business associates etc. in considering C of I ?
Should people be required to declare their interests ?
Conflict of Interest
The ethical responsibility to ensure that our private interests do not interfere with the proper
accomplishment of our organizational duties.
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Complete program at: fora.tv Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina discusses the importance of personal ethics to doing business, and shares her thoughts on being fired by HP. —– Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard discusses “Tough Choices,” telling her own story, along with her unique perspective on leadership, technology, globalization, and sexism. At age twenty-three, Carly Fiorina was a law school dropout who had no idea what to do with her life. Twenty-two years later, Fortune named her “The Most Powerful Woman in Business” and she was recruited to be chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard – the first female CEO of a Fortune 20 company – with a mandate to shake things up. And then her story really gets interesting. – Books Inc. Carly Fiorina was president and CEO of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005 and chairman from 2000 to 2005. Before joining HP, she spent nearly twenty years at AT&T and Lucent Technologies, where she held a number of senior leadership positions.
Video Rating: 3 / 5
Improve Yourself And Gain Further Skills – Mechanisms For Ethics Advice And Support – Artur Victoria Research And Studies
I will provide further advises on this issue. I am available for any requested individual needs.
This would cover the need to establish, within your organization, various mechanisms which will foster ethical behavior and allow individuals to seek advice on dilemmas, get support for difficult decisions etc. This might include:
Ethics Contact Officers
The establishment of a structure and process for advice giving, which is outside the normal hierarchical relationships between people. This must provide a focal point (or points) for enquiries / advice and uphold absolute confidentiality. It’s continued depends upon a track record of trust.
Responsibilities may include:
Global accountability for developing and directing an organization’s ethics, compliance, and business conduct function for the total corporation or organization,
Providing leadership, oversight, and expert advice to ensure appropriate development, interpretation, and implementation of ethics and compliance strategies, policies and programs,
Accountability for all program activities relating to standards of conduct including ethical relationships with employees, customers, contractors, suppliers, shareholders, and other stakeholders,
Providing leadership in the development of a compliance risk management program to assess, prioritize, and effectively manage legal and regulatory compliance,
Accountability for the organization-wide confidential reporting program (such as a Hotline)allowing employees, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders to report violations of the organization’s ethical standards, violations of law or corporate policy, without fear ofretaliation,
Setting the strategy for and administering the organization’s annual or periodic ethics and compliance training, and regular communications around ethics, compliance and conduct
Issues,
Conducting investigations into alleged violations of organisational ethics, compliance or conduct practices and making recommendations for resolution of misconduct – including disciplinary action,
Measuring and assessing organisational performance in compliance and ethics arenas, and, providing comprehensive reports to the CEO and any committees, the Board of Directors etc.
Ethics Committees
Roles can include a spectrum from advisory (no hands-on) to very hands-on involvements, as follows. This will depend upon the organizational culture, nature of the business, tolerance for control of compliance outside traditional hierarchical structures etc:
Develop and regularly review standards and procedures
Resolve conflicts between competing ethical requirements
Suggest behaviors’ that reinforce the organization’s ethics guidelines
Assume responsibility for overall compliance
Act as a court of last resort re: interpretations of standards and procedures
Define how the organization balances the rights of individual employees against the organization’s needs
Solicit stakeholder input regarding how standards and procedures are defined and enforced
Develop and disseminate the organization’s standards, policies and guidelines on ethical decision making
Oversight an Ethics “Hot Line” as a mechanism for seeking guidance and reporting suspected wrongdoing and to protect employees’ privacy
Serve as the primary agent for enforcement and discipline
Ensure that offences are not repeated, through direct action
Provide a forum to foster communication among ethics committees at large
Monitor and audit overall compliance
Undertake or commission research projects on ethics issues relevant to the organization
Whistleblower procedures and protection
Three Polarized Views of Whistle blowing
The worst possible disloyalty an employee can perpetrate – “ratting’ on others, or on the organization;
An unfortunate but necessary evil, to be avoided at all costs, but ultimately may be necessary as the only option; and
An expectation that it must happen – that everyone has the responsibility to blow the whistle – that it is a public duty. The organization needs to emphasize and assert where it stands on this and what it expects of its managers and leaders. Managers should ask themselves
Does my organization have clearly documented procedures for receiving and investigating a public interest disclosure from internal or external sources ?
Does my organization have appropriate safeguards to preserve confidentiality ?
Does my organization have trained investigators who can impartially perform investigations ?
Does my organization have a process for proper recording of public interest disclosures and the action taken on them?
Does my organization have documented procedures to protect staff who may be the subject of a reprisal because of a public interest disclosure ?
Do my staff have a clear understanding of their ethical obligation to report fraud, corruption and maladministration of which they become aware ?
Do my staff have a clear understanding of what a public interest disclosure is, how to make a public interest disclosure, and what they should do if they receive a public interest
disclosure in their role as a supervisor 7
The various types of whistleblowing:
Internal Whistle blowing
Disclosure to someone within the organization itself.
Is this ethical if it is “required” of employees ?
Which loyalty takes precedence – that to the organization or to the cause at hand ?
Governmental Whistleblowing
Unauthorised disclosure of actions and/or information relating to the activities of a government or its employees. Personal Whistleblowing
Reporting the actions of another which we regard as injurious to us personally
Impersonal Whistleblowing
Reporting the actions of another which we regard as injurious to others (not us personally). When is whistleblowing morally defensible. An hierarchy of conditions upon which whistIeblowing may be, or become, morally defensible:
If the actions/practices contemplated for disclosure are very likely to do “serious and considerable” harm to individuals.
If the actions/practices have been reported to the person or group immediately in authority (eg: the disclosing employee’s supervisor).
If the person, or group in authority, does nothing about the allegations and if the employee
has exhausted all reasonable channels.
If there is clear evidence which is accessible, can be documented, and which would be sufficient to prove a case to any reasonable empirical observer.
If the employee believes that the disclosure may change how the situation is being handled
(eg: operating procedures), ie: there is a reasonable chance of a successful outcome.
The Whistleblower’s Checklist!
Ensure the situation really warrants it (eg: is the potential harm of disclosure warranted, above the potential harm of non-disclosure)
Examine your motives. What is your real reason for considering blowing the whistle ?
Gather evidence, verify it and document your information. Determine exactly the behavior you are reporting and to whom it will be reported.
State allegations appropriately, specifying exactly the type behavior being reported, who is being adversely affected, and how.
Just the Facts. Avoid slander, and immoderate language. (This helps to avoid retaliation eg: litigation)
Decide whether the whistleblowing will be open or anonymous.
Decide whether you can disclose this information while still a member of the organization
or whether you should leave first.
Protection of Whistleblowers
Can Whistleblowers EVER really be protected?
Is it ethical if there is no such requirement?
Which loyalty takes precedence (to the organization or to the fellow employee) ?
External Whistleblowing
Disclosure to someone outside the organization itself.
-Harassment
-intimidation and victimization
-job-loss
-Threats
-personal injury
-discrimination
-property damage/loss
-physical abuse
-defamation suits
Rewards and Sanctions
Processes need to be put in place to ensure that there are visible, reliable and consistent rewards for high ethical behavior and penalties for non-compliance to organizational values
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