There's a big mess when talking about ethics, morals, and law. Most authorities use the terms interchangable and they are not. At least they are not interchangeable here. (It's my blog.)
Let's start by defining and then ignoring one of the terms - morals. Morality has three common usages. The first is that morals are a code of conduct defined by philosophy, religion or individual conscience. The second is that morals are idealized code of conduct. We can work with either of these. And ignore them since they are pretty much beyond the scope of secular education. Or, more simply put, your morals come from your religion or philosophy and any attempt to change them is preaching, not teaching.
The third definition of morals is the problem. Many people use morals and ethics interchangable. This immediately generates a problem because it allows folks with agendas to declare unethical issues to be immoral. This muddies the waters considerably. For example, it is unethical for me (a professor) to award grades for profit. But is it a sin? In some moral systems it is; in others it isn't.
To avoid this problem, for the purposes of this article, morals will be considered to be separate from ethics and not subject to discussion. The debates over the morality of capital punishment, abortion, chewing gum in class and other issues cannot be solved because the moral authority lies far beyond anything changable.
To bring this point home, expand the discussion to include other cultures and religions.The reason Hindu's do not eat cows is not because it is illegal or unethical. It is because it is immoral. Hard to argue with that.
So, having eliminated morality from the discussion, we now turn to ethics. There's a problem here too. Ethics is a branch of philosophy which includes moral issues. Since we aren't going to talk about morals, we aren't going to talk about that type of ethics either.
So what's left. Here's a definition that works well for me. Ethics are the rules and standards of conduct required by one's membership in a group. Think about it. Accountants, state employees, physicians, attorneys, and many other groups have Ethical Codes of Conduct. Even comic books have an ethical code. Do the medical codes on conduct apply to me? Nope, I'm not that kind of doctor. I don't belong to that group. How about the state employee ethics code. Yep, I've got to adher to that one.
Which brings us to the big difference between an ethical rule and a law. Law are rules and standards of conduct the society imposes on all of it's members under penalty of punishment. Break a law, go to jail. But what happens if I break an ethical rule? Jail? Nope, I get kicked out of the group.
Let's try some examples. What would happen to me if I didn't return phone calls? Not much. People get mad, things get messed up and I'd get yelled at. But I wouldn't get fired or kicked out of the "Professor Group". What could happen to an attorney if he didn't return phone calls. He could theoretically have her license taken away. Why? Because failing to communicate with a client is against the attorney code of ethics. Booted from the Island.
Would the attorney get arrested? Nope. What he did was unethical but not illegal.
Lets try another example. (I'm going to sneak morals back in here just for a second.) The State would like physicians to help with the lethal injections used for capital punishement. Is that moral? It really depends on the individual physician, her religious and/or philosophical beliefs. So, if the physican has no moral objection to capital punishment, is it legal for her to participate in an execution. Sure it is. Do physicians ever participate? Nope, because it has been declared unethical by the medical community that they belong to. For physicians, participation is legal, maybe moral but definitely unethical.
OK, so where does that leave us. Well, we need to ask three separate questions about any of our actions or behaviors. Is it moral? Is it ethical? Is it legal? And it's entirely possible for something to be one, two or all three. Ask yourself the three questions for the following:
- Murder
- Cheating on taxes
- Driving 2 miles over the speed limit
- Listening to someone elses cell phone conversation when you can't help but hear it.
- Listening to someone elses cell phone conversation when you have to strain to hear it.
- Eating a Whopper Burger in India
- Slaughtering Midianites
That last one brings us to our final point. Business, in fact Life itself, is global.We are required to interact with many cultures, governments and religions. We must realize that the voice on the other end of the phone or the author of the email may be operating under a much different set of morals, ethics and laws. We in the West can pretty much agree that it is illegal, immoral and unethical to pick up a rock and beat someone to death with it. But not everyone agrees with us.
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