A good decision is both effective and ethical.

When using ethical decision-making tactics you must evaluate the options in a way that is aligned with your ethical principles. During this process you will eliminate the unethical options and select the alternative, or choice, that is best serving your goals both morally, and effectively. In this blog, we’ll lay out the process of ethical decision-making, why a good decision is both effective and ethical, how you can make the choose the right ethical alternative, and how it’s good for businesses to do so.

The Process of Decision-Making Ethics: The Three C’s

Commitment-Consciousness-Competency

Commitment
is the inclination to do the right thing morally, regardless of the outcome.

Consciousness is the daily awareness to behave in a way that is in line with your moral compass, and the ability to enact this behavior every day of your life.

Competency applies to your capacity to collect information, analyze it, consider and imagine all the alternatives or choices, and see possible consequences and or outcomes for each scenario.

Effective Decision-Making

Although we want to only live ethically, we cannot disregard the truth that our decision must also be effective and productive to our goals. Effective decisions mean that we are choosing the alternative that leads us to our desired outcome. An ineffective decision is when we choose an alternative that has unintended or negative results. When trying to decide on a course of action, consider the immediate ramifications and the effect it will have out on long-term goals. Sometimes when we only decide based on effectiveness, we don’t consider the result it will have on the world around us. In business, this can lead us to have a workplace where no one acts ethically and therefore there isn’t trust, respect, or fairness. So, although one may think that effective decision-making is the most important thing, ethical decision-making often leads to more success and productivity.

Ethical Decision-Making

Ethical decision-making is the process of choices alternatives that create trust between our colleges and counterparts. They create the bedrock of society that is based on responsibility, respect, and trust. Ethical decision-making creates better decisions by setting the rules of behavior within a given group. When we don’t use decision-making ethics, we get companies that take big risks with a disregard of the effect it will have on the world around them.

Steps of Ethical Decision Making

1. Gather all the information related to your choice.
2. Interpret the ethical issue, it’s helpful to write it out.
3. Identify who will be affected by the decision. Who has a stake in this decision? Not just who you intend to be affected but also the unintentionally affected.
4. Recognize the consequences of each alternative. Take who will be affected by each alternative and see how it will positively or negatively affect their lives.
5. Identify the moral obligations and principles. What obligations do you have to the rights and justices of the people who are impacted by your choice? Does it play against the moral consciousness of “do no harm” and “do as to others as you would have them do unto you”?
6. Emotionalize the decision, how will it affect your integrity? What does your gut say? This step is about your character and how you see yourself, will it change for the worse or the better depending on each alternative.
7. Imagine the scenarios of all possible actions. Be creative in your imagination with all possible alternatives, sometimes decisions are purposefully presented to us in a way that makes us feel like it is a binary choice when in fact there is a multitude of possibilities.
8. Make a decision in line with your ethics and prepare arguments for opposition views. If you look at the choice from an opposing view do you get the same alternatives? Or are their alternatives much different than yours? If so, be prepared to oppose their views with facts and information that lead them to the conclusion you found.

When companies and people don’t make ethical decisions, the consequences can be bad both for the success of the company and the world that they function in. If a company saves money with a practice that then destroys the environment, this is bad both ethnically and effectively. The company will see huge finical repercussions as well as ethical repercussions. Particularly now when consumers are focused on backing companies with morals that are aligned with their own, ethical decision are not only good for your character they are also good for the financial success of your company.