A634.9.4.RB.Melissa Burns

Select three key lessons you take away from the course. Share if your perception of ethics has changed. Has this course expanded your perspective on ethics as an individual, in an organization, and in society. If so, how. If not, why not?

Taking this course in ethics has opened my eyes to how important it is to take the time to reflect and to look inward and to seek to find where our basis for our ethical understanding and perspective comes from.  What are my values, and do I make ethical decisions based on morals or rules?  What bias do I hold and where did they come from? How can I mitigate my own implicit bias? These are some of the questions that I have had to consider throughout this course.  Three key lessons that I have taken away from this course include the following:

1.     By understanding the power and social structure that leads to racism, we can work towards deconstructing or ‘unpacking,’ as our professor says, the bias that we hold in order to break down and re-construct the neuropathways in our brains that hold the key to our subconscious discrimination.  Those that built the power structure and who hold the positions of decision making (straight, white men in the United States for example) cannot complain about the ‘burden of privilege,’ and compare their ‘struggle’ to that of the minority groups because they are the ones who hold the power and they built the system.  This seems very basic and sort of a no-brainer, but sometimes pointing out the most obvious truths helps us to better understand the struggles and situations of those who are not a part of the ‘old white boys club.’  It is also important to understand that racism is not an act against an individual, but against a group as a whole (LaFollette, 2007). These basic understandings could change the response and reactions of people to a movement like that of Black Lives Matter.  In addition, contact and forging relationships with those people whom we cannot identify with will also help to break down the barriers of discrimination and racism by forging a new connection.  Our professor Kadie Mullins said that, “We can create new connections by having more positive, meaningful, and diverse exposures to people who you may have a bias against”.  What does this look like?  Watch a tv series that is not full of characters who look like you and make a new friend with a person that you have a difficult time identifying with.  If a person claims to be homophobic, perhaps it is because they have never met or gotten to know a person from the LGBTQ community.  

2.    Ethical theories are either based on values or on rules, not usually on both.  This was a completely new concept to me that was right in front of my face all along, but I never identified it for what it was.  I have certainly struggled with how I approach controversial issues in my life as I understand the importance of rules but feel my values so deeply and cannot justify acting against them.  I certainly approach ethics from a values-based perspective and therefore, have to understand where my values are based.  I won’t dive into this in detail but would like to encourage everyone to look at how they approach ethical dilemmas, from a rule or value-based platform.  Once you identify this, then work out where those rules or values are grounded.  This helps me to better understand other’s points of view when we disagree on an ethical dilemma.  This enlightenment is going to help me going forward in business and in life in so many ways!

3.    In our last module and the last chapter of our text we discussed the factors that alter our moral expectations and the grounds for differential obligations including knowledge and abilities as examples (LaFollette, 2007). This is another one of those lessons that was obvious, but I had never identified it for what it is.  Taking a course in ethics has helped me to put into words and context what we experience in daily life.  We do not hold a child to the same expectations as we do an adult and in the same way we do not hold all humans to the same moral expectations and obligations. This doesn’t feel fair at times and this feeling of unfairness is one that I have struggled with over time. Now that I can see and identify and understand the ‘why’ behind it, I have been able to let go of some anger and resentment that I have held onto without knowing why it was there.  

I hope that I can continue to apply these lessons and to learn and grow as a better and more empathetic and open-minded member of society.  I believe that every person should have to take an ethics course to help them to do the same.  

References

LaFollette, H. (2007). The Practice of Ethics.  Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.

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