Three tips for keeping your moral compass on course
Are there useful moral lessons in the latest Barr vs. ABC or Trump vs. the world tweets?
By Christopher Gilbert
The news cycle is often rife with controversy involving public figures. And sometimes a fall from grace — from Hollywood to politics, the corporate boardroom, etc. — brings closer examination of the root causes. Such events and social media skirmishes reflect a lack of ethics that plagues many levels of American society, but they also provide an opportunity to strengthen our own moral pathways.
The important issue isn’t in arguing over which schoolyard bully is the most unethical. The roots of the problem are not only in misplaced, society-influenced priorities but in a widespread belief that “good” people make the good decisions and “bad” people make the unethical ones.
We need to start a national conversation about what it means to do right in business and in life despite the constant personal, social, economic, and other cultural and societal pressures to ignore what is right in favor of success. A growing awareness and practice of ethics is in essence also a profound transformation of our character, and it often comes as we navigate the most dramatic or challenging events of our lives.
How do we overcome the pressures and temptations to flout ethical practices? Here are three tips to keeping your moral compass and making good ethical decisions while holding ourselves and others accountable.
Trust “lighthouse moments”
These can be subtle or indelible experiences that make us decide a course of action and shape our future choices. Ethics serve as our lighthouses, providing us with a reference point — enlightened guidance along the pathway of our best decisions. They warn of danger as well. Some believe that ethical choices are relative to whom and what you know and when you know it. But this is akin to the idea that “ignorance of the law is an excuse.” Ethics are far more about what we do, sometimes despite what we know.
Stay away from the edge
While a few risk the drop over, most drivers are cautious when navigating a mountain curve or a bridge without guardrails. Our best choices for ourselves and others happen when we navigate dos and don’ts within a predictable pathway bounded by right and wrong. Ethics form our guardrails. Imagine a world of intermittent guardrails that move. Ethics aren’t iffy, gray, or relative; they exist under all driving conditions for all drivers. Right choice-making happens best on a pathway guided and protected by ethics that are constant.
Keep moral standards universal
So many of the highly-publicized scandals, shootings, and tragedies that could have been avoided can be traced to people disregarding our common moral standards. An impersonal world full of disunity, divisions, and exclusive, tribal-like “us versus them” mentalities breeds an atmosphere that becomes self-perpetuating. If our ethical choices are defined not by a set of universal moral codes owned by everyone but by standards individuals or groups apply to themselves, there are no wrong choices, because all choices become right.
Universal moral principles provide solid reference points for establishing values, behaviors, and ethics that create trust. And, despite popular belief, they are attainable — we already have quite a few.
Dr. Christopher Gilbert, author of “There’s No Right Way To Do the Wrong Thing,” is an international ethics consultant and senior consultant and speaker at NobleEdge Consulting.
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