THE UTILITARIAN APPROACH Focuses on the consequences that actions or policies have on the well-being (“utility”) of all persons directly or indirectly affected by the action or policy. The principle states: “Of any two actions, the more ethical one will produce the greatest balance of benefits over harms.”

Five Basic Approaches to Ethical Decision-Making

• The Rights Approach.
• The Utilitarian Approach.
• The Virtue Approach.
• The Fairness (or Justice) Approach.
• The Common Good Approach.
• The Utilitarian Approach.
• The Rights Approach.
• The Virtue Approach.

The four approaches are: The principle approach, in which decisions are made according to a principle such as the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule The consequence approach, in which decisions are made according to their likely outcomes The virtue/character approach, in which decisions are made according to the …

The following are examples of a few of the most common personal ethics shared by many professionals:

• Honesty. Many people view honesty as an important ethic.
• Loyalty. Loyalty is another common personal ethic that many professionals share.
• Integrity.
• Respect.
• Selflessness.
• Responsibility.

There is a framework of ethics underlying our lives on a daily basis, helping us make decisions that create positive impacts and steering us away from unjust outcomes. Ethics guides us to make the world a better place through the choices we make. Ethics in business is just as important as ethics in personal life.

For someone who is honest and follows good moral standards, use the adjective ethical. Ethical comes from the Greek ethos “moral character” and describes a person or behavior as right in the moral sense – truthful, fair, and honest.

Thinking ethically means placing virtue as a guiding ideal in your calculations. This is a necessarily general definition, as there are different ways of assessing both what values are virtuous and how to determine whether actions are consistent with those virtues.

Critical thinking plays a large role in ethics because it is the process by which we determine for ourselves whether or not something is right or wrong. By taking the path of a critical thinker, a person develops a mental process of evaluation which helps to determine their ethical standards.

Normativity means that ethical reasoning should always lead to a claim how a professional should act in a certain situation. An important dimension of normative ethics is justifying policies or actions. As a rule of thumb, ethical justification is usually based on prevention of harm or protection of rights of a person.

16 Real-Life Examples of Ethical Dilemmas

• Should parents monitor teens’ social media activities?
• Reporting an accident.
• Ghosting in the workplace.
• Medical care versus religious beliefs.
• Misinterpret data deliberately?
• Share my political leanings and risk losing clients?
• Internet dilemmas.

5 Common Ethical Issues in the Workplace

• Unethical Leadership. Having a personal issue with your boss is one thing, but reporting to a person who is behaving unethically is another.
• Toxic Workplace Culture.
• Discrimination and Harassment.
• Unrealistic and Conflicting Goals.
• Questionable Use of Company Technology.

Ethical decision-making refers to the process of evaluating and choosing among alternatives in a manner consistent with ethical principles. In making ethical decisions, it is necessary to perceive and eliminate unethical options and select the best ethical alternative.

Counsellor Substance Abuse. Lack of Personal Values Clarification. Limitations of Codes of Ethics and Conduct. Lack of a Decision Making Model.

Decision making involves a great degree of value clarity, ethical decision making involves more! Unlike certain financial, inventory and production decisions, ethical decisions cannot be coded into digital machines. They require critical thinking and evaluation.