A psychological phenomenon known as
“Ethical Fading” can overtake an organization’s culture, allowing
people there to make extremely unethical actions while still believing they
were acting within the bounds of their ethical frameworks. Almost always, if
not always, moral decline in businesses, departments, and organizations begins
at the top. Typically, it is a leadership issue. It results from undue pressure
to achieve narrow, short-term objectives, making acting morally more
challenging. As a result, several factors contribute to ethical fading,
including our attempts to reason away the consequences of our choices.
We say things such as:
– It is what you have to do to get ahead.
– It is what my boss wants.
– Everyone is doing it.
– It’s the system.
– I don’t have a choice.
One searches for means of disengaging from any
obligation in this way. This fallacious justification hurts the growth of both
the person and the organization. In my employment as an engineer, I
frequently observed technical managers’ ethical standards eroding in an effort
to defend themselves and their errors.
According to Professor Brock Bastian, there are
three ways to prevent ethics from fading:
1) Go Slowly: We need to slow down and employ
System 2 thinking (reflective, deliberative, effortful) when making significant
ethical decisions to understand the situation better and consider many
viewpoints.
2) Remind and reframe: It is possible to
prevent ethics from fading from view by reframing a problem by beginning with
the ethical consequences rather than the financial or productivity imperatives.
3) Avoid euphemisms. Is it “creative
accounting,” or “cooking the books,” and firing, or
“right-sizing”? Accounting techniques that are either unlawful or
“aggressive.” “Externalities” or damage to the environment?
civilian fatalities or “collateral damage.” Please be aware of when
language starts to use euphemisms, which can cause the ethical implications to
disappear from view quietly.
Georgios Ardavanis – 08/04/2023