I’ve spent the past week cruising the upper Rhine in Germany. At one of the stops, we not only had the chance to explore a Museum of Medieval Torture but also visit the dungeon of a local castle with its sampling of the tools used to encourage ethical behavior. In addition to the pillories (wooden structures designed to embarrass people who were caught violating the laws and norms of the community by putting them on display in the city square with their heads and wrists in constraints), other specific punishments—primarily iron masks—were used to punish people for particular ethical violations: cheating, lying, stealing, gossiping, and so on.
While those of us who teach ethics sometimes fuss over what kind of behaviors are actually unethical, we would be wise to remember that every community in recorded history sets thresholds for ethical behavior for their members, and that the categories of unethical behavior are remarkably similar. While we recoil at the medieval methods of ethical nudging, we should acknowledge that the fear of shaming is alive and well. We have just replaced a fear of being put in the stocks with the “newspaper test”—would we be willing to have this action splashed across the front page of the Wall Street Journal or New York Times?
Behavioral ethicists, those who study how our biological and social programming informs our ethical sensibilities, are giving scientific shape to those early medieval intuitions: without constraints imposed either through our own self-discipline or fear of humiliation, we will be tempted to behave in ways that do not contribute to a healthy community. I remember being struck by Jon Haidt’s assertion in The Righteous Mind (2012) that as communities grew and people could not keep track of their neighbors, the notion of an all-seeing God was brought forward to make sure that people knew they were being watched, even when far from home.
To reinforce that idea of being watched, every culture has some method for teaching its children expected behaviors. Whether through the European story of Saint Nicholas, who as the popular Christmas song reminds us “knows if you’ve been bad or good,” or through cautionary tales of witches and goblins who would find naughty children, we have our ethical intuitions shaped by the expectations of our communities. Once we move past the idea of Santa Claus, the next task is to be shaped by personal and societal expectations for adults.
A primary function of ethics education at the collegiate and corporate level is to make learners aware of the set of behaviors that will lead to public shame and expulsion from the professional community. We begin by noticing where ethics touch compliance: if one violates the particular norms as outlined in professional codes of ethics and the law, one will be disciplined in some way—from prosecution to public shaming. We then move into the ethics of leadership, being expected to exceed the ethical minimum set by law and regulation.
The perennial problem of being ethical is learning to exercise self-control. With a propensity to quick thinking and reflexive action, most of us will inadvertently lean toward gratifying our desires rather than moderating our behavior to allow us to thrive while meeting the expectations of the community. As Eugene Soltes found in his interviews with white-collar criminals, the universal theme was that people framed their decisions as business decisions rather than ethics, and thus didn’t consider that their actions would actually hurt anyone. So, we learn that a critical step toward becoming an ethical adult is learning to exercise self-control, stopping long enough to remember not to indulge our desires and passions.
Mindfulness—that practice of stopping, becoming aware of our feelings and then our thoughts—is essential for self-control. The key for learning to pay attention to our thoughts and desires is to develop strategies to move from what Daniel Ariely calls Type 1 thinking, which is fast and reflexive to Type 2 thinking, which is slow and reflective. Practices such as thoughtful reflection and mindful breathing help us get in touch with our bodies, reduce adrenaline surges, and prepare ourselves for the next practice: evaluation of options for action.
Those of us who have tried to tease out when a “business” decision becomes an “ethical” dilemma know that the line is hard to draw. To avoid the ethical blind spot of mis-framing an issue and inadvertently violating personal or community ethical standards, many suggest that the antidote is to slow down and engage in a practice of ethical discernment for every major decision—no matter whether labelled a business decision or an ethical decision. As we are reminded, the engineers who gave the final OK to the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger reframed the problem from an ethical dilemma to a management decision—and then made a choice with disastrous results.
The implication is that those who teach ethics should include two facets to their curriculum. The first is to teach what behaviors are expected in the profession. That skill includes strategies for resolution of ethical dilemmas, including situations where people have different notions of appropriate behavior. The second is to teach strategies of self-control, practices that students can use to provide a check on their own ethical blind spots that nudge toward self-serving behavior.
The strategies may be as old as the examen, a method of self-reflection taught by St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuit Order, or as new as various body/mind techniques taught to center oneself before a decision. Whatever the method, including these strategies in our classes better equips our learners to discover their own preferred method of self-control, a discipline that might just save a career.