Ethical concerns and dilemmas in government and private institutions

Ethical dilemmas or moral dilemmas or ethical paradoxes, are situations in which there is a choice to be made between two options, neither of which resolves the situation in an ethically acceptable fashion. In such cases, societal and personal ethical guidelines can provide no satisfactory outcome for the chooser.

An ethical dilemma is a complex situation that often involves an apparent mental conflict between moral imperatives, in which to obey one would result in transgressing another.

Types of Ethical Dilemmas:

Ethical  dilemmas are in three broad categories:

Personal Cost Ethical Dilemmas: It arises from situations in which compliance with ethical conduct results in a significant personal cost to the decision maker in an difficult situation.

Right-versus-Right Ethical Dilemmas: It arises from situations of two or more conflicting sets of bonafide ethical values.

Conjoint Ethical Dilemmas: It arises when a careful decision-maker is exposed to a combination of the above-indicated ethical dilemmas in searching for the “right-thing-to do”.

Ethical dilemmas also arise in the following situation:

When his professional directives are in contrast with his own personal values

Working towards the best interest of the community versus being responsive to the government. Ethical dilemmas can arise, when two equally striking options are justified as `right’ in certain situations.

For a public servant attempting to function as a professional, the demands of law, his duty, fairness, due process, provides a productive ground in which ethical dilemmas arises. Whistle blowers face this problem because their disclosure may institute a crime when the on-going misconduct is severe.

Ethical standards are not codified, so there are always chances that dilemma arises and disagreements always occur about proper behaviour. An ethical dilemma arises in a situation when the choices or behaviour is undesirable and presents harmful ethical consequences. Right or wrong is not clearly identifiable.

Process of resolving an ethical dilemma in administration

An ethical dilemma is more complex and demanding than a problem of what it appears to be. These dilemmas cannot be solved based on its initial status of presentation. The decision maker faces a difficult situation in which he faces mutually exclusive alternatives that choosing one option means negating the other that is equally important.

However a dilemma is also dealt appropriately by altering and reformulating all the options in a systematic and coherent manner. To resolve ethical dilemmas, a sequence of logical reasoning sets is proposed to integrate and rearrange the process of dealing with ethical dilemmas. They are:

Accountability: The loyalty of the bureaucracy to the ministers is grounded on their obligation to be answerable and responsible to the legislature who is accountable to the will of the people and their general interest. It is then a fundamental ethical duty bearing on civil servants to show a spirit of impartiality and discretion and keep their own personal preferences out in the performance of their duties and responsibilities.

The rule of law and the principle of legality: The rule of law is fundamental and universal to politics and society. Respect and adherence to the principle of legality is an important requirement to exercise authority. Law establishes the minimum standard for morality. Unethical conduct means violation of law. Thus far enforcement of law should be priority in case of dilemma.

Professional integrity: In administrative profession, knowledge and expertise should be used with certain standards defining professional ethics such as, avoiding corruption in the delivery of services.

Responsiveness: The government responsiveness to its citizens is a key issue in political economy. In this respect, ethical reasoning in state action entails that public institutions be responsive to society and pay attention to the needs and demands of the people, facilitating access to services and creating an enabling environment for sustainable human and social development.

Ethical Dilemma Situations:

Personal Friendships

Ram had several friends including Shyam and Mohan. Shyam has recently met and started dating a wonderful lady named Deepa. He is convinced this is a long term relationship. Unknown to Shyam, Ram observed them at a restaurant several days ago and realized Deepa is the wife of his other friend Mohan.

Ram is deciding whether to tell Shyam that Deepa is married when he receives a call from Mohan. Mohan suspects his wife is having an affair and since they and Ram share many friends and contacts, he asks if Ram has heard anything regarding an affair.

To whom does Michael owe greater friendship to in this situation? No matter who he tells, he is going to end up hurting one, if not both friends. Does he remain silent and hope his knowledge is never discovered?

Societal Dilemmas

A pregnant woman leading a group of people out of a cave on a coast is stuck in the mouth of that cave. In a short time high tide will be upon them, and unless she is unstuck, they will all be drowned except the woman, whose head is out of the cave. Fortunately, (or unfortunately,) someone has with him a stick of dynamite. There seems no way to get the pregnant woman loose without using the dynamite which will inevitably kill her; but if they do not use it everyone will drown. What should they do?

Information Access:

Tony, a data analyst for a major casino, is working after normal business hours to finish an important project. He realizes that he is missing data that had been sent to his coworker Robert.Tony had inadvertently observed Robert typing his password several days ago and decides to log into Robert’s computer and resend the data to himself. Upon doing so, Tony sees an open email regarding gambling bets Robert placed over the last several days with a local sports book. All employees of the casino are forbidden to engage in gambling activities to avoid any hint of conflict of interest.

Tony knows he should report this but would have to admit to violating the company’s information technology regulations by logging into Robert’s computer. If he warns Robert to stop his betting, he would also have to reveal the source of his information. What does Tony do in this situation?

Professional Life Versus Family Life:

Akash works in the claims department of a major hospital. Paperwork on a recent admission shows that a traumatic mugging caused the patient to require an adjustment in the medication she is prescribed to control anxiety and mood swings. Akash is struck by the patient’s unusual last name and upon checking her employment information realizes she is one of his daughter’s grade school teachers.

Akash’s daughter seems very happy in her school and he cannot violate patient confidentiality by informing the school of a teacher’s mental illness but he is not comfortable with a potentially unstable person in a position of influence and supervision over his eight year old daughter. Can Akash reconcile these issues in an ethical manner?

Sources of ethical guidance: Laws, rules, regulations and conscience

Conscience:

Conscience is an aptitude, intuition or judgment that assists in distinguishing right from wrong. In psychological terms conscience is often described as leading to feelings of remorse when a human commits actions that go against his moral values and feelings of pleasure and well-being when our actions, thoughts and words are in conformity to our value systems..

Etymologically the word ‘conscience’ derives from the Latin conscienta, meaning ‘with-knowledge’. In the Greek word translation, “conscience” means “moral awareness”. Commonly used metaphors for conscience include the “voice within” and the “inner light”. It implies ‘a person’s moral sense of right and wrong’ as well as consciousness of one’s own actions. Expressions such as ‘gut feeling’ and ‘guilt’ are often applied in conjunction with conscience. In this sense the conscience is not necessarily a product of a rational deduction but is something that can be influenced by the indoctrination of one’s parentage, social class, religion or culture.

The extent to which conscience informs moral judgment before an action and whether such moral judgments are or should be based in reason has occasioned debate through much of the history of philosophy.

John Locke argued that the conscience was proof for the concept of innate principles but deliberated whether these principles provide moral absolutes, whether they are objective or subjective “if conscience be a proof of innate principles, contraries may be innate principles; since some men with the same bent of conscience prosecute what others avoid.” Thomas Hobbes likewise pragmatically noted that the conscience can be potentially mistaken therefore opinions formed on the basis of conscience, even with full honest conviction should not always be trusted.

What is accountability?

Accountability is to take complete responsibility by a person or an organization for what he/she or the organization did or failed to do (which was their duty) and must be able to give a satisfactory reason for it and the use of authority entrusted in them to carry out that responsibility. It is to check whether a work was done or not and Accountability as a process is performed after the work is completed or is supposed to have been completed.

As an aspect of governance, it has been central to discussions related to problems in the public sector, nonprofit and private (corporate) and individual contexts.

In leadership roles, accountability is the acknowledgment and assumption of responsibility for actions, decisions, policies and resulting consequences.

Civil servants though not directly accountable to the People or their representatives but there are Vigilance authorities and Ombudsman in all organizations to keep a tab on them and also they are indirectly accountable for their action/exercise of authority to the people through the political executive (who are answerable to the Houses of Parliament for their Ministries) and Courts of Law. If there is no accountability then the civil servants would turn in to despots, arbitrary and corrupt.

What is difference between accountability and responsibility?

The main difference between responsibility and accountability is that responsibility can be shared while accountability cannot. Being accountable not only means being responsible for something but also ultimately being answerable for your actions.

Also, accountability is something you hold a person to only after a task is done or not done. Responsibility can be before and/or after a task.

In ethics and governance, accountability is answerability, blameworthiness, liability, and the expectation of account-giving. Responsibility may refer to: being in charge, being the owner of a task or event.

Example: It is DM’s responsibility to make sure everyone in his district is given Aadhar Card. So DM will be aware of this task and keep working. At this point, you cannot say DM has been held accountable for performing this task. DM is only held accountable — owes an explanation for his actions — if he could not finish the task in stipulated time or there were many errors.

Types of Accountability:

Political accountability is the accountability of the government, civil servants and politicians to the public and to legislative bodies such as a parliament.

Ethical Accountability: Within an organization, the principles and practices of ethical accountability aim to improve both the internal standard of individual and group conduct as well as external factors, such as sustainable economic and ecologic strategies.

Administrative Accountability: Internal rules and norms as well as some independent commission are mechanisms to hold civil servants within the administration of government accountable. Within department or ministry, firstly, behavior is bound by rules and regulations; secondly, civil servants are subordinates in a hierarchy and accountable to superiors. Nonetheless, there are independent “watchdog” (Like CAG) units to scrutinize and hold departments accountable; legitimacy of these commissions is built upon their independence, as it avoids any conflicts of interests.

There can be many other types of Accountability.

Accountability Dilemma

Because many different individuals in large organizations contribute in many ways to the decisions and policies, it is difficult even in principle to identify who should be accountable for the results. This is what is known as the problem of many hands. It creates a dilemma for accountability.

If individuals are held accountable or responsible, individuals who could not have prevented the results are either unfairly punished, or they “take responsibility” in a symbolic ritual without suffering any consequences. If only organizations are held accountable, then all individuals in the organization are equally blameworthy or all are excused. Various solutions have been proposed. One is to broaden the criteria for individual responsibility so that individuals are held accountable for not anticipating failures in the organization.