My Mother tells the story of being in conversation with a fellow teacher and administrator at her junior high school, discussing what to do about a problem student. As the conversation was coming to a close, her colleagues turned into the men’s restroom. Mom followed. The men looked up in surprise and asked what she […]
Dr. Baird on how organizations can build ethics into the onboarding process.
By Dr. Catharyn Baird At EthicsGame, we often hear from faculty members who assert they don’t have to think about teaching ethics because their subject doesn’t include conversations about values. However, like it or not, every faculty member teaches ethics — either intentionally or unintentionally — as they discuss dilemmas. All educators talk about the […]
Many books and articles have been written on cognitive bias — an attitude that forms automatically and affects judgments, decisions, and behaviors. The greatest emphasis is on negative biases, which cause people to discriminate against others or act unethically. Jeffrey To, a researcher in experimental psychology, cautions that training alone will not eradicate undesired bias, […]
On June 13, 2015, Catharyn spoke at TEDx MileHigh. Her talk was entitled “Ethics for People on the Move.” Her message was that none of us have the answers to increasingly complex questions about how to both be effective in our work and live well with others. Thus, studying ethics and developing decision- making skills […]
Ethics: Bridging Culture and Compliance was the theme for EthicsGame workshops at two recent conferences, the 108th Annual Meeting for the National Association of State Board of Accountancy and Corporate Learning Week 2015. Both workshops explored how to help people recognize an ethical dilemma and then use multiple ethical perspectives to resolve the problem. The […]
Over the past several months, those of us in academics have had thoughtful—and heated—conversations about trigger warnings. What obligation do faculty members have to warn students that content, in either assignments or classroom discussions, might be upsetting to their learners? On one side of the conversation, faculty members and students assert that trigger warnings allow […]
The headline after Villanova beat University of Oklahoma in the Final Four last weekend read—“Moral of Villanova victory: The better team beat the best player”. The game validated the work of neurobiologists who explore the genetic imprints that nudge us toward what we define as ethical behavior. The research of E. O. Wilson and others has found […]
In the EthicsGame 2016 Survey of Ethics Educators, 80% of the more than 2300 respondents who include an ethics component in their courses said that teaching critical thinking is the most important learning outcome for their classes. Now, one component of critical thinking is determining the facts and assumptions in the dilemma at hand. Another […]
As the Wells Fargo saga continues to unfold, those of us who teach ethics in business schools are mystified. We know that we discussed fraud and misrepresentation—and their consequences. As those who responded to EthicsGame’s 2016 survey reported, teaching ethics is very important. So what happened? The New York Times headline tells all: employees needed a paycheck. Under ordinary […]