The great ideologies no longer guide us, we no longer share the traditional ethical frameworks with the subgroup in which our lives take place. We must find out for ourselves what “the good” is. Ethics are being individualised, morals are being democratised. In a complex and hyper-connected world, we face many more dilemmas: what exactly do you think about the Singapore way of tackling the corona outbreak?

The filter bubbles provide a continuous one-sided view of the world. You often hear “solution seeks problem”: whatever the problem is, the answer is always (delete what doesn’t fit) more freedom / administrative autonomy / a return to the glorious past / less inequality / … . How can you ensure that you can still sufficiently challenge and adjust your ethical judgement? 

If fear governs and polarisation is the norm, simple messages have an edge. But moral dilemmas are precisely dilemmas because none of the options for action is without harm. So moral issues are usually not simple, they need nuance and careful thinking, and these days you have to shout out loud to get enough attention for those. 

At the same time, we no longer have a common language for discussing ethical issues: who knows the Ten Commandments? Many say that we must defend the ideals of the Enlightenment ‘in order to defend our values’, but do you know how to include the Enlightenment values in practice when facing a dilemma?

Do you have any friends or relatives with whom you would be better off avoiding some issues for the sake of peace? A kind of armed peace because you know that you are unable to engage in conversation without it derailing? 40% of Americans say that they really do not want to talk about politics at the Thanksgiving party, and 45% doubt whether it is a good idea. Surely that is one thing that unites them.

Environment, climate, human rights, the fight against child labour, fair trade, the fight against poverty, the right to clean water, the SDGs, … : as an organisation, you are expected to assume responsibility for the entire chain: from your suppliers (and their suppliers), via your own processes, to the distributor of your products or services, up to and including the possible recycling of your products. This is not easy, and you will have to set priorities in your plan of approach. So what is a fair distribution of your limited resources to give one priority over the other?

Organisations and companies should work agile, and set up self-directed teams. This means that these teams also need to be sufficiently self-reliant on an ethical level: you don’t want them to fall below the quality bar anyway, you only want them to propose profitable things, and your expectations are also high when it comes to ethics: you don’t want your teams to ruin your reputation.

As an organisation, you draw up codes of conduct, but they never fully cover all real life cases that may occur, and moreover, our VUCA world is changing so quickly that too concrete codes of conduct quickly become obsolete. So you want employees able to think for themselves about the moral aspects of your services and products, and they should not limit themselves to following a few rules.

The memory of the internet also makes it more difficult: trolls that bump into old things from your past have little leniency and understanding for the imperfect human nature or the bygone moral standards back then. If you show daring commitment, your track record must be perfect or you are quickly called hypocrite. Whereas I think: morals are constantly evolving, and the pursuit of a virtuous life can never be perfect. You have to be happy with every additional insight and have the courage to act upon it.

Ethics are also becoming more and more complex, but is there not something we can do about it?

As soon as you know the background of some of the concepts, rules and principles of the major Western ethical movements, you see them popping up everywhere. Suddenly you see opinion polls, newspaper articles and blogs in which you immediately recognise which ethical theory had the upper hand. You can learn how to use the other theories to come up with a richer range of options, and make a better assessment than if you only thought in one-dimensional terms.

You can learn what values and norms are, and what emotions have to do with them. This can enable you to communicate better about things that affect your sense of justice. You will be able to better maintain a dialogue if you know what binds emotions and values.

Crucial concepts such as freedom, autonomy and responsibility become very concrete if you think about them together for a moment. Knowledge of these concepts brings both mildness and sharpness to your inner moral dialogue. A few exercises in moral reflection can clearly show you how to make a well-considered assessment around a very practical ethical issue. Not rocket science, but a very practical approach. It helps to solve the moral fog in your head.

Zinnings offers this training in an Ethics programme. Fortunately, you can therefore become personally proficient in ethics ..

There is a theory about the moral development of a human being, based on research by Piaget and later Kohlberg. That model focuses on the sense of justice as an indicator for moral development.

It says that a child up to the age of 12 is first and foremost concerned with avoiding punishment, then also seeking mutual benefit, and later adapting to what others think is right.

So every level of development has its characteristic motivation that drives you in moral justice issues.

In puberty, man would then go a step further and also comply with the laws and rules of the peer group.

And then comes the real moral level of development, which escapes the external conventions and in which you develop your own pattern of values, and in the end you take consciously considered ethical positions. You think something is OK because it doesn’t go against your own principles.

In building up these principles and your own pattern of values, it is therefore useful to have knowledge, skills and a vocabulary that facilitates good moral considerations.

Hence: adolescents at secondary schools and universities benefit from good moral education. Zinnings therefore offers training and workshops for these age groups.

This is also an interesting theory for organisations.

The lowest level is “avoiding punishment”. In organisations you can find out whether many employees do what they do because they mainly want to avoid punishment (or sanctions). In that case, the company culture is more likely to revolve around “keeping a low profile“, avoiding mistakes and not taking too much risk.

Or the other extreme: it could be that many employees work perfectly in line with their own values and feel that their personal moral judgment is flourishing and they are allowed to think autonomously. In that case, the company culture will be based on daring, meaningful and committed entrepreneurship.

It goes without saying that employees will be more motivated, involved and loyal if they can fully be their moral self in their job. If you want to know whether your corporate culture is sufficiently ethical, or how mature it is, or how it evolves, research into the predominant type of motivation is very revealing. It is often a good baseline measurement when starting an update of the company’s ethics policy. Zinnings can guide such research in your organisation.

By the way, there is another reason why an organisation should not wait to strengthen its ethical competencies: the ethically slippery slope. Imagine that employees perceive some ethically questionable behaviour among colleagues, then they ask themselves whether or not they should intervene. Often it is quite a barrier to act and address colleagues on such behaviour, which does require some courage. Not everyone will get over that threshold. But then, as an employee, you are partly complicit, and you no longer have the full credibility to intervene in other matters even if you would like to do so. And so you let things pass. And before you know it, you are on an ethical slippery slope in your organisation, because nobody intervenes anymore. And so organisations become subcultures in which different standards apply than what the outside world expects, and sooner or later that avenges itself. So it’s better to start too soon rather than too late to strengthen your organisation’s communication skills on ethical issues. This is a necessary condition to nip any ethically slippery slope in the bud.

Ethics are becoming more important but at the same time more complex, as explained above. It certainly pays to get better skilled.

Does ethics always pay off in business? That would assume that everyone is in good faith, and that everyone is aiming for the long term, that is, I fear, asking a lot. But the changing public opinion, the more ethical consumer behaviour, the need for an organisation to be at the forefront of that public opinion, the harsher and faster public moral indignation on social media in the event of incidents, the expectations of your employees, stress prevention, the moral components of sustainability and purpose, … are factors that highlight the usefulness of a good ethical policy.

Better risk management, reputation management, employee retention, personal energy and sense of purpose, self-reliance and autonomy, that’s what it comes down to.

There is one “but”: if you do not mean it, if you are not intrinsically motivated to act ethically, the benefits will not last. If you do it just for the gains, then you will certainly fail, and the trust in your ethical intentions will leave at lightspeed. Trust comes on foot but leaves on horseback.