Be Good – Here’s How

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Everyday ethics

Competency: self-development, ethics, integrity

Who benefits: all of us

Consultant Usage: to thine own self be true

What’s it about? Be Good: How to Navigate the Ethics of Everything is a great book for two reasons. The most important is the author has wit, irreverence, and a slightly sarcastic style that is just like Me! (Editor’s note: You wish. Whatever faint resemblance to your writing style exists mainly in your own mind.)

Okay, okay, in addition to the (important) fact that this book is written as smoothly as a baby’s bottom (Editor’s note: The author would never write that line.), there are some excellent stories, practical advice and titillating (Editor’s note: There you go again.) and provocative everyday situations that we all experience in life.

The author is Randy Cohen. He wrote 614 columns for The New York Times Magazine. I have written a similar number for Envisia Learning (Editor’s note: Cut it out!). His columns were entitled “The Ethicist”. They were written for people like you and me. People who have everyday dilemmas concerning personal conduct. Should I do this? Should my brother do that? He writes about Work, Family, Home, Community, Civic Duty, Sports, Love, Sex, (Editor’s note: Don’t go there!) and much more.

His goal is getting us to be aware of even the smallest moral dilemma, confronting it, noting our initial response and subjecting it to ethical analysis. He writes “Practice can improve moral reasoning. Or speed at sudodu.” (Did you observe his wit? I can do that!)

He sets up his book in a way that allows us to practice our moral reasoning. Each of his stories begins with a dilemma a reader faced and essentially asks us, the readers, what we would suggest? It didn’t take me long to recognize and realize that moral questions don’t have easy answers. Or maybe multiple answers. Many times I wanted to begin my thought response by saying “It depends.” But that’s not a fair answer because life isn’t that way. Something happened – now there is a problem – a solution is needed.

I found myself completely enveloped by this book. I took time to analyze almost all of the reader enquiries. What would I do? What should I do? Are those two questions producing different answers? Why? I kept thinking “Oh what a tangled web we weave….”

I am going to let the book entice you. Here are some inquiries from some of the daily areas where moral dilemmas creep into our lives. I found the inquiries intriguing and not always easy to answer. How about you?

Work: “I am a supervisor at a large corporation in the Bible Belt. I am gay and out and, while the company has no formal nondiscrimination policy, my colleagues and supervisors generally have no issues with my sexuality. I am to interview a potential employee in his early twenties who hunts, drives a truck, and did not attend college. I want those who join my team to be of a tolerant disposition. Would it be appropriate to tell this applicant that I am gay?”

Home: “Hypothetically, would it be unethical to place a security firm’s lawn signs around my front yard even though I have not installed its security system? These fake “caveats” would discourage intruders, and the security firm would get free advertising for its product. So who’s hurt?”

“Without warning or consultation, our new neighbor cut down the trees that separated our properties, destroying our privacy and views. He had the legal right to do this … but does he have an ethical obligation to mitigate or repair the damage or compensate us in some way?” (In his response, brilliant writer Cohen wrote “As Joyce Kilmer did not write: I think that I shall never see / a poem vengeful as a tree.”)

Doctors: “I am an anesthesiologist at a metropolitan hospital. A patient scheduled for an operation one day requested a female anesthesiologist, a request we were inclined to honor. When the anesthesiologist’s name was given to the patient, she wondered if the anesthesiologist was African American. When told that she was, the patient demanded a white anesthesiologist … What should we have done?”

Civic Life: “A friend was caught by police radar going 51 in a 35 mph zone. In front of his children, he admitted that he was speeding but asked if I knew a lawyer to help fight the ticket. I told him I thought he should accept the consequences, learn from the experience and give his children a lesson in ethics. He looked at me as if I were from Mars. Shouldn’t he just pay the ticket?”

Money: “When I checked into a hotel in California, I was starving, so I ate the $6 box of Oreos from the minibar. Later that day, I walked down the street to a convenience store, bought an identical box for $2.50, and replenished the minibar before the hotel had a chance to restock it. Was this proper? My view is “no harm, no foul.’ In fact, my box was fresher: The Oreos I ate were going to expire three months before the box I replaced them with.”

So how did you do? Think you know the right answers? Even if you are right, are you sure of your reasoning? Cohen’s responses were often as thought provoking as the inquiries. I urge you to access this book and read AND think along with the author. It is important in our decision making to not only make the correct (moral) decision, but to understand why. (Editor’s note: Okay, that’s a good ending.)

Catch you later.

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.