According to TCT’s chapter five is about ethics. Ethics are the systems of morals that guide our society to act properly in any given situation. I believe ethics are part of a foundation towards people acting properly in a well formed society.
According to the reading there were three main parts where ethics come from. They are personal, social, and conservation. I believe when we wrote our instruction page we had to gain our ethics from at least one of these sources. For my instructions project I would say that I used personal ethics more so than the others. I go to school in the college of technology so I decided to relate my topic to that area of my life. In my field there is a heavy emphasis to keep data secure so there is more social ethics involved. One would need a strong sense of social ethics because if we do not do our job correctly we can be sued. I know I do not what that happening as it would be hard to get back into the industry after that. I feel the ethics involved in our white paper topic would be with white papers currently out there. We should not copy them but merely take notes over them. Taking the best parts and forming them into our own work. That way we will be proud of what we write.
In the reading it also mentioned ethical dilemmas. There is not always so black and white as it can be a nice gray color. It is a good idea to think about if there are any laws that will persuade us to a certain action. What would others think if we performed this action? Most importantly, would we be able to live with ourselves with whatever action we choose. I feel that we must be confident in our decision so it will not haunt us for years to come.
Ethical choices
Nothing is ever as black and white as it seems. There are always going to be slight variations that will affect your decision making or the ultimate outcome of a decision. You will most likely be forced to make a decision at some point in your career or life where all of the options will violate some of your ethics. You have to make do with what is presented to you. There are times when rigidly sticking to your ethics is a good thing and other times when it’s just plain silly.
Poor ethical decisions get
Poor ethical decisions get many working people in trouble with their companies and their customers all of the time, especially now when there are so many economical problems. Businesses and employees are today are trying to do everything to get ahead, and stay afloat, and in though times, unfortunately people choose to do things to get ahead that are not ethical. I think you made a good point about working in the technology field and how important it is for you to be ethical in order to not only avoid legal issues but to remain dignified. I also agree with you that sometimes there are gray areas in ethics, especially personal ethics because not all people feel that same about right and wrong.
Ethical Companies in Hard Times
Ck86, you mentioned how tough times are leading companies and their employees to make poor unethical decisions. This is one of the reasons that I have been looking at USAA. Their key values are service, loyalty, honesty and integrity. I just had a second interview with them today and they said they don’t focus on trying to make a profit. This is a strange business plan for a financial company but it’s working. They focus primarily on how they can better serve their members. With the better service comes more members and current members don’t leave. They are doing great for a financial company even in these rough times. It’s a great company like that which I hope to work for some day.
On a side note: Thanks Jason for pointing them out to me.
-Chris