There's no moral high ground to using ethics as a bludgeon

I make mistakes. Most of us do. Even though I have written “The Right Thing” column about how people make ethical choices since September 1998, I am not immune to an occasional ethical lapse or have fallen short of making the best right choice I could have made.

Writing a column about ethical decision-making gives me no special powers to be more ethically righteous than anyone else. Because it’s part of my job, I may think about such things more frequently than some others, but my own shortcomings remind me that each of us is fallible and the best we might be able to hope for is to strive to do right by others.

There are times, however, that the fact of me writing this column has been used as a bit of a bludgeon. Once, after an editor and I got into a heated argument about how best to describe something in an article I had written, he grew impatient and said, “All right, Mr. Ethics, there’s no arguing with you.” That may have shut down our discussion for a moment, but it didn’t fix the article passage. My editor’s suggestion seemed to be that because I write about ethics I must think I have all the right answers. He was wrong. I don’t.

Another time when I was being interviewed on stage by a business school professor in the Midwest about how businesspeople can make sound ethical decisions, an attendee took some joy in asking how either the dean or I could be trusted to be an expert on the topic of ethics when we flagrantly ignored the signs on the auditorium door that read “no drinks,” as evidenced by our bottles of water sitting alongside us on stage. The audience member was correct. We violated the rules even though the water was on stage greeting us when we arrived. But if his suggestion was that either of us claimed to practice perfect ethical behavior in business because we were discussing it on stage, he too was wrong.

From time to time, I try to let readers know what has influenced the reasoning I use when writing a column on the ethical choices we make. Sometimes this takes the form of referencing a piece of writing. Other times it involves citing someone far wiser than I am about a particular topic. What I never try to do in the column, however, is to suggest that somehow I have the only appropriate ethical response to a given question or situation. I don’t.

For many situations, there’s no one right answer or choice. The ethical work involves thinking through all the possible choices we can make in response to something to try to arrive at the best right choice possible. You and I may arrive at a different solution to an ethical challenge with neither of us necessarily being wrong.

The right thing, it seems to me, is to avoid using ethics as a bludgeon with which to judge others or to assume you or I or someone else has some sort of moral high ground, but instead to focus on how to think through the decisions and choices we make. Ideally, we’ll make these choices motivated by doing what’s best not just for ourselves but also for those who might be affected by our actions.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. 

 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2022 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Are we obligated to forgive?

Are we ethically obligated to forgive someone? That question arrived from a reader a few weeks ago and, lest he hold a grudge for me not attempting to answer, I am going to give answering it a whirl.

Putting aside hard-held beliefs by some that we “forgive and forget” or “turn the other cheek,” how much of an ethical responsibility do we have to do so? Some depends on what the transgression was and who we are.

If the transgression was slight (failing to hold a door open for the person behind us, not sharing a friend’s like for a favorite book or movie, wearing white shoes after Labor Day), there seems little reason for putting off forgiveness, especially when the transgressor might not even know there was anything to be forgiven. If the transgression is a bit more serious (quietly rooting for the Yankees in a Red Sox household), it might take some more time to fashion forgiveness, but seems hardly worth losing a relationship over.

There are times, however, when someone does something that strikes the recipient as so egregious, they just can’t bring themselves to forgive the person. When, for example, a boss is unsupportive or dismissive of an employee, is it any surprise that the employee may not find the ability to forgive? Or if a friend goes to prison for writing hundreds of bad checks including some to us, are we really ethically obligated to forgive?

Some, as I wrote earlier, depends who we are. If we decide everyone deserves a second chance and shouldn’t be judged by one action, then perhaps forgiveness is warranted. Does that mean we should recommend that overbearing boss for a job or trust our finances to the check kiting friend? Does that mean we should not warn a friend who asks about what that awful boss was like to work for? No, of course not. Even if forgiveness is granted, it doesn’t automatically trigger amnesia about whatever the transgression might have been. Sure, “forgive and forget” can work just fine for minor infractions. For greater ones that might have set someone’s life askew, forgetting might be too much to ask.

We shouldn’t force anyone to have to forgive someone unless they truly want to forgive them. And that forgiveness should only come when the genuine desire exists to forgive. Otherwise, it is a hollow gesture.

It’s important to remember, however, that the act of forgiveness gives us no claim to moral righteousness, nor does it guarantee that everything between us and whoever wronged us over whatever will be set straight. Whoever wronged my longtime reader who asked if we are ethically obligated to forgive someone may find that the person who wronged him doesn’t give one whit if my reader forgives him or not. If he cares to remember the incident at all, the person who wronged him may maintain that he did nothing that needs forgiveness.

If we’re going to forgive someone for something, the right thing is to do so when we genuinely want to forgive, even if we receive no acknowledgment of that forgiveness in return.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. 

 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin 

How old is too old to go trick-or-treating?

 The woman I’d eat bees for loves Halloween. It’s not just the beauty of the trees as the leaves change from green to orange, yellow and other autumnal shades. Nor is it just the pumpkins, gourds and hardy mums lining the walkways and stairs in front of houses. Sure, she loves those things, but what really sparks joy for her is that Halloween evening often feels like one big celebration.

Typically, in the neighborhood we live in, we get hundreds of trick-or-treaters on Halloween night. While the rain sometimes dampens the numbers, it has rarely rained on Halloween night. Even when it does, we register a visitor count in the low hundreds. Homeowners new to the neighborhood are often taken aback at how many visitors we get, but they learn quickly that if they want to participate, they will need to be prepared for the onslaught.

In 2020, while many of us were still working or going to school remotely, the Halloween visitors didn’t come. Last year, the numbers were in the low hundreds, but didn’t come close to the volume of a pre-pandemic times. This year, the expectation is that the number of visitors will be close to a typical pre-pandemic Halloween.

Beyond the typical questions that arise about the appropriateness of encouraging kids to eat candy or gathering in large crowds as cases of COVID have been ticking up in the Northeast is a perennial question that looms during Halloween: Should there be an age cutoff for when children should expect to receive candy when they knock on a stranger’s door and say “trick or treat”?

Some readers seem to believe that teenagers have aged out of expecting to have bags, bowls or pillow cases filled with treats. “It’s for the younger kids,” they argue. “Older kids can buy their own candy.”

There should be no expectation that anyone should have to participate in giving out treats nor judgment if they choose not to. It’s also up to each parent to decide if he, she or they want to let their child go door to door and, if so, starting at what age. Keeping the trick-or-treaters safe regardless of their age is a concern for parents and neighbors engaging in the practice.

It’s also up to each individual to decide what kind of treat they want to give out. Unless you’re going to ask for an ID check, it seems impossible to institute an actual age check. If you want to give out candy, just give it out until you run out or grow tired. Then go inside, turn off the front door light, and be done.

My wife has a different approach when apparent teenagers approach the door in makeshift costumes. “How old are you?” she asks them. Often they hesitate and sometimes they seem to shave a year or two off their actual age. But after they answer, she goes to the stash she keeps of full-size candy bars and gives out to the teenagers rather than mini-size candy bars she’d been distributing to younger kids.

“It’s one of their last chances to be kids,” she tells me. “I don’t want to discourage that.”

It’s another of the reasons she loves Halloween.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2022 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

---