Ethical theories and their limits

1.

Put yourself in the shoes of Kathleen Fitzgerald. You’ve worked hard to move up in your organization, and you’ve done so under the wing of a trusted mentor and boss. And now that mentor and boss is pressuring you to use some tactics that make you uncomfortable, because they seem a bit sleazy and dishonest. You try to voice your concerns, but you’re met with rationalizations, such as “Just this once is OK” or “If you don’t do it, someone else will, so what difference does it make?” or “If it was so bad, don’t you think one of the higher-ups would have stopped it by now?” You’ve heard that employees who vocally protest the tactics—for instance, by using the company’s ethics hotline—face retaliation. And given your financial situation, you can’t risk having your pay docked, much less losing your job.

Regardless of what you think about what Fitzgerald did or didn’t do—and even she admits that she made some serious moral mistakes—it is understandable that she caved to the pressure and went along with the fraudulent practices. To say it is understandable is to say, in part, that she seems to be a decent person, with a more or less solid set of values, and that we can see how a decent person in her situation might end up making the same moral mistakes that she made. These are mistakes that resulted, in part, from her not effectively confronting the rationalizations that her boss and coworkers presented.

But how and why exactly can a decent person, with solid values, fail to respond well in the kind of situation that Fitzgerald faced, giving in to flimsy rationalizations? A part of the story is that it’s not so easy, at least when we’re actually facing these kinds of situations, to distinguish between flimsy rationalizations and sound ethical reasoning, and to use sound ethical reasoning to confront the flimsy rationalizations and make good decisions. That is, even if we have solid values, it may not be natural or easy to explain how the statement, “If you don’t do it, someone else will, and so what difference does it make?” is a flimsy rationalization rather than a real justification for going along with the bad practice in question.

Before moving further, pause and ask yourself a few reflection questions:

How confident am I that I would have acted differently from how Fitzgerald responded?

What strategies did she try that I would have tried?

What were the statements her boss and coworkers reportedly made that were flimsy rationalizations for their bad behavior?

2.

To distinguish between flimsy rationalizations and sound ethical reasoning, we should first focus on what sound ethical reasoning is and then see how some common rationalizations fall short. There are two essential features of sound ethical reasoning, which require some balancing to hold together: being principled and being morally sensitive.

Begin with the simple idea of reasoning, and specifically, reasoning about what to do (as opposed to reasoning about what to believe, or what to feel). This is called “practical reasoning.” There are many ways people arrive at decisions about what to do, many of which are not based on practical reasoning. Sometimes we simply do what we feel like doing. Sometimes we simply follow orders. Sometimes we are driven by strong emotions, such as fear or anger. When we engage in reasoning, we are doing something in addition to being moved by our inclinations, sense of obedience, and emotions. We are taking account of (at least some of) the considerations that bear on what we ought to do. Our determination of what we ought to do isn’t simply given by what we feel like doing, what we’re told to do, or what our emotions drive us to do. Sometimes we can realize, through reasoning, that the considerations at hand call for us to do something that conflicts with our inclinations, orders, and/or emotions. (This is not to deny, of course, that feelings, emotions, and directions from others can help disclose what we ought to do.)

If that’s what practical reasoning is, how can we do it well and, specifically, in an ethically sound manner? First, we need to be principled in how we take account of the various factors at hand. This involves drawing on tried and true general claims about what is morally important or imperative. For instance, for the conundrum that Fitzgerald was facing, some of the initially salient factors were: my coworkers are doing it, my boss is telling me to do it, and I might get punished or fired if I don’t. But a bit of reflection on why she was uncomfortable with the tactics that were being used would quickly bring to mind some additional factors, such as: doing this would be dishonest, and customers don’t realize what’s being done with their accounts. Principled reasoning applies some general truths about the factors at hand to help derive conclusions about what one ought to do. For instance, one relevant, plausible moral claim is that, even if we would bear some inconvenience, we should uphold the trust that others justifiably place in us. A related, relevant moral claim is: Don’t mess with others’ personal affairs without their consent, unless there is some urgent need and you are impartially authorized to do so. Applying these general moral claims (or principles) to Fitzgerald’s case would lead us to reason in ways that prioritize the importance of respecting customers and upholding their trust and place less weight on the pressure being exerted by Wells Fargo peers and higher-ups.

Now notice that, if you were in Fitzgerald’s shoes, you couldn’t even engage in the above forms of reasoning unless you first noticed all of the relevant factors at hand. That is, if you didn’t notice that customer trust was being abused, or if it didn’t occur to you that the tactics were sleazy or dishonest, you couldn’t reason your way to a morally sound conclusion. Your reasoning needs to be sensitive, or attuned, to the full range of moral factors at hand.

Remember when we discussed the moral challenges posed by institutions’ division of normative labor in the chapter on Whistle-blowing and Conflicts of Interest? Here is another instance of these challenges: Sometimes our individual roles within organizations can make it difficult for us to notice the full range of morally relevant factors that come to bear on the situation we’re facing (MacIntryre, 1993). We need to train ourselves to look out for and take account of all the morally significant features and impacts of our decisions, even when our organizations are structured in ways that lead us to discount or ignore those factors.

It should now be clear how sound ethical reasoning differs from rationalizations. Rationalizations are not grounded in plausible, general moral claims. Take, for instance, the common rationalization, “That’s above my pay grade.” It is not plausible to claim that, in general, persons should never pay attention to moral factors that are relevant to positions in their organization that are better compensated than their own. Rationalizations also tend to ignore some of the moral factors at hand; they are not attuned to the full range of morally relevant factors. For instance, the common rationalization, “No harm, no foul,” leads persons to ignore morally important consequences other than direct harms (such as deception).

Pause again for some reflection questions:

What would it have looked like for Fitzgerald to engage in a conversation or dialogue with a coworker that exhibited principled ethical reasoning? Try to write it out like a script.

Why might it have been difficult for Fitzgerald to notice all of the morally salient factors?

3.

So we have some work to do. We need to learn how to discern and apply general moral claims (or principles) in our practical reasoning, especially when we face tough situations like Kathleen Fitzgerald’s. For this, we’ll need to learn some moral theory, which is the academic field dedicated to establishing the most plausible, reliable moral claims in light of the full range of human experience. (The alternative is just to guess or make up your own moral principles. That may work for you sometimes, but why wing it when you can draw on the resources of thousands of years of inquiry by some of the world’s smartest thinkers?)

We also need to train ourselves to be attuned to the morally salient features of our situations and the morally important impacts of our decisions. This will require us to study in more detail how organizational situations impede persons from paying attention to the right factors, including through the (mis)use of authority and displacement of responsibility. Understanding this will help prepare you for morally challenging situations. You’ll be able to see them coming, rather than being caught off guard by them.

References

MacIntyre, A. (1993). Social structures and their threats to moral agency. Philosophy, 74(3), 311-329.