Dealing with ethical issues is often perplexing. How, exactly, should we think through an ethical issue? What questions should we ask? What factors should we consider?

• The first step in analyzing moral issues is obvious but not always easy: Get the facts. Some moral issues create controversies simply because we do not bother to check the facts. This first step, although obvious, is also among the most important and the most frequently overlooked.
• But having the facts is not enough. Facts by themselves only tell us what is; they do not tell us what ought to be. In addition to getting the facts, resolving an ethical issue also requires an appeal to values. Philosophers have developed five different approaches to values to deal with moral issues.

The Utilitarian Approach

Utilitarianism was conceived in the 19th century by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill to help legislators determine which laws were morally best. Both Bentham and Mill suggested that ethical actions are those that provide the greatest balance of good over evil.

To analyze an issue using the utilitarian approach, we first identify the various courses of action available to us. Second, we ask who will be affected by each action and what benefits or harms will be derived from each. And third, we choose the action that will produce the greatest benefits and the least harm. The ethical action is the one that provides the greatest good for the greatest number.

The Rights Approach

The second important approach to ethics has its roots in the philosophy of the 18th-century thinker Immanuel Kant and others like him, who focused on the individual's right to choose for herself or himself. According to these philosophers, what makes human beings different from mere things is that people have dignity based on their ability to choose freely what they will do with their lives, and they have a fundamental moral right to have these choices respected. People are not objects to be manipulated; it is a violation of human dignity to use people in ways they do not freely choose.

Of course, many different, but related, rights exist besides this basic one. These other rights (an incomplete list below) can be thought of as different aspects of the basic right to be treated as we choose.

• The right to the truth: We have a right to be told the truth and to be informed about matters that significantly affect our choices.
• The right of privacy: We have the right to do, believe, and say whatever we choose in our personal lives so long as we do not violate the rights of others.
• The right not to be injured: We have the right not to be harmed or injured unless we freely and knowingly do something to deserve punishment or we freely and knowingly choose to risk such injuries.
• The right to what is agreed: We have a right to what has been promised by those with whom we have freely entered into a contract or agreement.

In deciding whether an action is moral or immoral using this second approach, then, we must ask, Does the action respect the moral rights of everyone? Actions are wrong to the extent that they violate the rights of individuals; the more serious the violation, the more wrongful the action.

The Fairness Or Justice Approach

The fairness or justice approach to ethics has its roots in the teachings of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who said that "equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally." The basic moral question in this approach is: How fair is an action? Does it treat everyone in the same way, or does it show favoritism and discrimination?

Favoritism gives benefits to some people without a justifiable reason for singling them out; discrimination imposes burdens on people who are no different from those on whom burdens are not imposed. Both favoritism and discrimination are unjust and wrong.

The Common-Good Approach

This approach to ethics assumes a society comprising individuals whose own good is inextricably linked to the good of the community. Community members are bound by the pursuit of common values and goals.

The common good is a notion that originated more than 2,000 years ago in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. More recently, contemporary ethicist John Rawls defined the common good as "certain general conditions that are...equally to everyone's advantage."

In this approach, we focus on ensuring that the social policies, social systems, institutions, and environments on which we depend are beneficial to all. Examples of goods common to all include affordable health care, effective public safety, peace among nations, a just legal system, and an unpolluted environment.

Appeals to the common good urge us to view ourselves as members of the same community, reflecting on broad questions concerning the kind of society we want to become and how we are to achieve that society. While respecting and valuing the freedom of individuals to pursue their own goals, the common-good approach challenges us also to recognize and further those goals we share in common.

The Virtue Approach

The virtue approach to ethics assumes that there are certain ideals toward which we should strive, which provide for the full development of our humanity. These ideals are discovered through thoughtful reflection on what kind of people we have the potential to become.

Virtues are attitudes or character traits that enable us to be and to act in ways that develop our highest potential. They enable us to pursue the ideals we have adopted. Honesty, courage, compassion, generosity, fidelity, integrity, fairness, self-control, and prudence are all examples of virtues.

Virtues are like habits; that is, once acquired, they become characteristic of a person. Moreover, a person who has developed virtues will be naturally disposed to act in ways consistent with moral principles. The virtuous person is the ethical person.

In dealing with an ethical problem using the virtue approach, we might ask, What kind of person should I be? What will promote the development of character within myself and my community?

The Feminist Approach

In recent decades, the virtue approach to ethics has been supplemented and sometimes significantly revised by thinkers in the feminist tradition, who often emphasize the importance of the experiences of women and other marginalized groups to ethical deliberation. Among the most important contributions of this approach is its foregrounding of the principle of care as a legitimately primary ethical concern, often in opposition to the seemingly cold and impersonal justice approach. Like virtue ethics, feminist ethics concerned with the totality of human life and how this life comes to influence the way we make ethical decisions.

Applied Ethics

Terms Used in Ethical Judgments

Applied ethics deals with issues in private or public life that are matters for ethical judgments. The following are important terms used in making moral judgments about particular actions.

Obligatory: When we say something is ethically “obligatory” we mean that it is not only right to do it, but that it is wrong not to do it.  In other words, we have a ethical obligation to perform the action.  Sometimes the easiest way to see if an action is ethically obligatory is to look at what it would mean NOT to perform the action.  For example, we might say it is ethically obligatory for parents to care for their children, not only because it is right for them to do it, but also because it is wrong for them not to do it.  The children would suffer and die if parents did not care for them.  The parents are thus ethically “obligated” to care for their children.

Impermissible: The opposite of an ethically obligatory action is an action that is ethically impermissible, meaning that it is wrong to do it and right not to do it.  For example, we would say that murder is ethically impermissible.

Permissible:Sometimes actions are referred to as ethically permissible, or ethically “neutral,” because it is neither right nor wrong to do them or not to do them.  We might say that having plastic surgery is ethically permissible, because it is not wrong to have the surgery (it is not impermissible), but neither is it ethically necessary (obligatory) to have the surgery.  Some argue that suicide is permissible in certain circumstances.  That is, a person would not be wrong in committing suicide, nor would they be wrong in not committing suicide.  Others would say that suicide is ethically impermissible.

Supererogatory: A fourth type of ethical action is called supererogatory.  These types of actions are seen as going “above and beyond the call of duty.”  They are right to do, but it is not wrong not to do them.  For example, two people are walking down a hallway and see a third person drop their book bag, spilling all of their books and papers onto the floor.  If one person stops to help the third person pick up their books, but the other person keeps on walking, we somehow feel that the person who stopped to help has acted in a more ethically appropriate way than the person who did not stop, but we cannot say that the person who did not stop was unethical in not stopping.  In other words, the person who did not help was in no way obligated (it was not ethically obligatory) to help.  But we nevertheless want to ethically praise the person who did stop, so we call his or her actions supererogatory.

Ethical Problem Solving

These five approaches suggest that once we have ascertained the facts, we should ask ourselves five questions when trying to resolve a moral issue:

What benefits and what harms will each course of action produce, and which alternative will lead to the best overall consequences?

• What moral rights do the affected parties have, and which course of action best respects those rights?
• Which course of action treats everyone the same, except where there is a morally justifiable reason not to, and does not show favoritism or discrimination?
• Which course of action advances the common good?
• Which course of action develops moral virtues?

This method, of course, does not provide an automatic solution to moral problems. It is not meant to. The method is merely meant to help identify most of the important ethical considerations. In the end, we must deliberate on moral issues for ourselves, keeping a careful eye on both the facts and on the ethical considerations involved.

Thus overall ethical framework on the basis of which people might define right and wrong consists of:

Ethics of rights- gives priority to individual’s innate worth and freedom of conscience

Ethics of utility/consequences – give priority to the greatest happiness for the greatest number

Ethics of virtue- promotes good character and what a reasonable person would do.

Ethics of care- gives priority to accountabilities arising from our interdependencies with others; the welfare of people concerned is as more important than the principle at stake

Obstacles to good ethical decision making

The process that leads to effective moral action can be roughly divided into three components:

1    Moral awareness: the process of identifying the ethical issues involved, the parties who have a stake in the action, what is at stake, and what the the action options are.

2    Moral judgment: the process of weighing the ethical considerations that bear on the situation and determining the moral course of action.

3    Acting in accordance with moral judgment: deciding the right thing to do is not enough.  One still needs to form the intention to do the moral thing and deal with practical obstacles in order to act effectively.

Below are some of the central obstacles that may be faced along each step of the process, along with suggestions about how they can be overcome.

Obstacle	How to overcome obstacle
Low or myopic moral perception: Some people fail to see the moral dimensions of given situations.  Others have distorted moral vision that results largely from rationalization or from an unwillingness to focus on the problem so that it is seen clearly.  The rationalizations contribute to and reinforce the perceptual problem	Be alert to the impact of your actions on stakeholders and increase your awareness by taking on their perspectives of the situation.
Morally inattentive informal norms and formal codes:  Such norms and codes create a background of expectations that can distort, obscure, or oversimplify the moral considerations present in a situation.	As members of organizations and communities we can consciously strive to improve the content and practical applicability of our norms and codes of conduct.
Self-serving bias: People tend to look for information that will confirm their pre-existing views, to interpret information in ways that support their own view, and to selectively remember the information that supports their view.	Try to find alternate interpretations of the same data, identify persuasive arguments, and soften the ground for efforts to consider a different, perhaps less self-serving, interpretation.

Obstacles to good awareness

Issues of low “moral intensity” will not be recognized as frequently as issues of high moral intensity because their ethical elements tend to stand out less from the background and to be seen as less emotionally interesting, concrete, and visually provocative.  When this is the case, moral elements of the situation are likely to be obscured, thus limiting or distorting one’s moral awareness.  The following is a description of what Jones points to as the 6 components of moral intensity:

1.   Social consensus – the degree of social agreement about the moral value (e.g. evil) of a proposed act

2.   Magnitude of consequences – the sum of the benefits/harms done to victims/beneficiaries of the moral act in question.

3.   Concentration of effect – how spread out or concentrated the harms/benefits of the proposed action are.

4.   Probability of effect – a joint function of the probability that the act in question will actually take place and that it will actually cause the harms/benefits predicted

5.   Temporal immediacy – the length of time between the present and the onset of consequences of the moral act in question.

6.   Proximity – the feeling of nearness (social, cultural, psychological, or physical) that the moral agent has for the victims/beneficiaries of the evil/good act in question.

Stimuli are salient to the extent that they stand out from their backgrounds.  High intensity moral issues are more salient than low intensity issues because either their effects are more extreme (magnitude), or they stand out in some particular way (higher concentration of effect), or involve significant others (proximity).

Stimuli are vivid to the extent that they are emotionally interesting, concrete, and proximate in a sensory, temporal, or spatial way.  High intensity moral issues are more vivid than low intensity ones because

(a) their effects are emotionally interesting (magnitude or concentration),

(b) they are more concrete (social consensus or probability of effect), or

(c) they are more proximate.  Higher vividness means greater probability of moral recognition.

To overcome this obstacle: Compensate for the effect of low moral intensity situations by being mindful of the way components of moral intensity affect you; consider whether your intuitions about the moral issue in question are not misdirected by the psychological predispositions these situational components trigger.

Obstacles to Good Ethical Decision-Making

Poor moral awareness: poor moral awareness can either result in a failure to perceive the problem as being an ethical problem at all (in which cases one does not go through the steps of good ethical decision making), or can present the agent with a distorted or insufficient picture of the problem to be resolved.

To overcome this obstacle: Identify the relevant obstacles to moral awareness and address them as suggested in the section above.

Failure to gather relevant facts: good practical decisions require that we know important facts relevant to the decision, such as those that help us determine the likely impact of the action on stakeholders.  

To overcome this obstacle: Make sure to take the time to gather whatever facts you need to come to a good decision.  Don’t rush to judgment before all the facts are in.

Since in many cases different stakeholders have interests that would be best served by different actions, it is important to carefully vet the facts one gathers to ensure that they represent as unbiased a representation of the situation as possible

Precisely what facts or types of facts are necessary for a good judgment on the issue may not be clear at the beginning of the process.  As one considers the situation from the perspectives of different stakeholders, the need for additional facts (or clarification of already attained facts) will probably arise.

Rationalizing ourselves out of good moral decision-making:  It’s easy to convince ourselves that we can do what we’d like.  The following are poor, but unfortunately all too common, rationalizations we use to excuse our actions.

• If you have to do it, it’s ethical to do.

• If it’s legal, then it’s moral

• It’s just part of the job

• It’s all for a good cause

• I was just doing it for someone else’s sake

• I’m just fighting fire with fire

• It doesn’t hurt anyone

• Everyone’s doing it

• It’s OK if I don’t benefit personally

• I deserve it

To overcome this obstacle:  Be mindful that these are rationalizations that we all commonly use – and avoid them.  Replace such rationalizations with a substantial and rigorous ethical deliberation process.

Insufficient attention/time:  given to ethical decision-making process because the situation has low moral intensity (see explanation of moral intensity above).

To overcome this obstacle: Compensate for the effect of low moral intensity situations by being mindful of the way components of moral intensity affect you; consider whether your intuitions about the moral issue in question are not misdirected by the psychological predispositions these situational components trigger.

Slippery Slope: People are willing to do unethical things because they have already done smaller, less extreme acts that make the bigger choice appear less (or not at all) unethical.)

To overcome this obstacle: Consider the positive power in this tendency! Break down your challenges into smaller, immediately actionable steps and you can tackle larger problems.  You can also zoom out even further out to the bigger picture of your life and see how you would feel about your decision when the dust settles.

Sunk Costs and Loss Aversion: We tend to continue toward an unethical course of action simply because we are reluctant to accept that our prior choices or investments were wrong or wasted

To overcome this obstacle: Talk about what we have already learned from the prior decision or investment, even if it’s not a financial gain.

Common biases can unconsciously influence our decision-making process and result in unintentionally unethical conclusions. 

Biases

About the world:

• We tend to miscalculate the negative consequences of our behavior and the risk involved.
• We create inaccurate judgments about causal perceptions
• We ignore low-probability events altogether
• We deny uncertainty
• We discount the future, giving disproportionally more weight to present consequences than anticipated future consequences.

 About other people:

• Through ethnocentrism and stereotyping we inaccurately believe that our values and beliefs are superior to those of a different group.
•  We can be misguided by our trust in an “authority heuristic” – we often trust in the wisdom, expertise, and experience of authority figures, but occasionally this trust is misplaced and the heuristic becomes a harmful bias.

About ourselves

We have illusions of superiority (we’re morally better people than others), sometimes because we misremember the past in our favor.

We have self-serving perceptions of fairness

Overconfidence in our abilities causes us to mispredict our future ethical behavior.

To overcome this obstacle:  Be mindful of these biases and rationalizations that we all commonly use – and avoid them.  Replace such rationalizations with a substantial and rigorous ethical deliberation process.

Obstacles to Taking Moral Action, Once A Moral Judgment Has Already Been Reached

Rationalizing immoral action by deciding that morality just isn’t all that important:  Even after one has concluded that an action is immoral, it’s easy to convince oneself that doing the morally right thing isn’t important enough, given other considerations (economic, self-interest, etc.)  This is particularly easy to do with regards to a particular situation where acting morally appears to be against one’s interests.

To overcome this obstacle:  

Be mindful of this tendency – ask yourself whether it is something you truly believe, or merely an excuse for self-serving action.

Remember that you expect others to act morally and criticize those who fail to do so as callous, selfish, or evil.  Keep in mind that your actions reflect upon and determine on your own character – especially when faced with decisions such as this one.  Do you want to be the kind of person who chooses self-serving over morally right action?  Do you want to be a hypocrite that criticizes the immoral actions of others, while excusing your own?

Obedience to Authority: We tend to obey those in authority, including when authorities direct us to perform actions we believe are unethical.  (Hartman, 2008)

To overcome this obstacle:

Keep in mind that you are ultimately responsible for your own actions, and that others will hold you responsible for these actions.

Identify alternate authorities to serve as role models.  

Consensus/Peer Pressure:  We have a tendency to succumb to peer pressure, both because we want to “fit in” and succeed within an organization, but also because our actual thinking is changed) .

To overcome this obstacle:

Keep in mind that you are ultimately responsible for your own actions, and that others will hold you responsibility for these actions.

The more mindful we are of this pressure, the less power it has over us.   

Build your own group of like-minded individuals to create peer pressure that is more in line with your personal values.

The Inside/Outside Struggle: We do not want to be cast out for being different.  In many cultures, if you diverge, you are shunned.  The consequences for pushing against the in-group of the organization can include: blackballing, excommunication, disfellowship, discharge, expulsion, and denial.

To overcome this obstacle:  

Consider the impact of inaction.  Will your failure to do what’s right result in continual harm to others and/or the violation of others' rights?

Keep in mind that once enough people diverge, a new majority arises.

Perception that we have little influence over events: The more control we believe we have over an event, the more we tend to perceive ourselves as responsible for the events we bring about or allow to happen.  Situations where the consequences of our actions are far removed from us particularly give us this perception, even when the impact of our actions is considerable, and typically make it more difficult for us to form the intention to perform moral action and to act upon that intention.  (Jones, 1991)

To overcome this obstacle: Be mindful of the tendency to minimize the importance of your action – particularly in situations where the impact of your actions is not immediately evident.

And a general obstacle, which affects awareness, judgment, and action: lack of experience.  All of the above can be improved with practice and self-reflection.

To overcome this obstacle:  Ethics education will probably not transform you into an ethical person overnight, but good ethics education that gives you practice dealing with difficult situations and increases awareness and self-reflection about how it is that you approach ethical problems can surely help.  Such tactics have been shown to make people feel more comfortable when faced with ethical challenges and to increase the sophistication of their moral reasoning.

So far as his private life is concerned, almost everyone is agreed that ethical norms and moral values must govern it. Even in respect of public life, the view is not dissimilar, though in actual practice different yardsticks are applied.

We, in India, were fortunate to have been led during the struggle for Independence by one who, apart from being an astute political leader, was also a great moral crusader who has his place in history along with the Buddha and Christ. For him, means were no less important than the ends. There was in the personality of the Mahatma a subtle, indescribable, magic touch, for all the different persons who came in close contact with him were turned into men of gold, be it Nehru or Patel, Azad or Rajendra Prasad, Rajaji or J.P. Narayan. All propogated the principles of truth and moral values.

Indian social reality cannot ignore the Parochial interests, party interests, group interests, regional interests, individual interests governing day to day life. Only a few think of national interests.

Ethics and moral sentiments are as much relevant and significant in public life as they are necessary in the private life of individuals.

Pandit Nehru at the Lahore Session of the Indian National Congress concluded his presidential address with the words: “Who lives if India dies and who dies if India lives?”

No one can deny that in the rough and tumble of politics, there are bound to be heated discussions and public controversies. These by their nature are an integral part of a democratic set- up. Despite all the heat and controversies, despite all the frayed tempers and strong adjectives which are bandied about and occasionally add colour to the fierce debates, we have to think seriously whether it is not possible to evolve a principle that whatever shape we give to the policies of the parties and the programmes of the group, it should always be ensured that no act of ours harms the national interests.