Step 1 article -
- EthicsGame - Eli Players Assessment Ethical Lens Inventory Completed 8/22/2023 Printed 8/22/2023 DERRICK COOK Your preferred ethical lens is: Blended Responsibilities and Relationship Mild Rationality and No Preference between Autonomy and Equality (MRNP) You use your personal reasoning skills (rationality) to balance between living into your personal principles (autonomy) and building a fair community (equality). Your Primary Values show how you prioritize the tension between rationality and sensibility as well as autonomy and equality. Your primary value is Rationality with no preference between Autonomy and Equality Your value preferences place you between two lenses, the Responsibilities Lens and the Relationship Lens. Those with a Responsibilities Lens focus tend to define ethical success as having the right to choose how to responsibly live into their principles—even if other people don’t always agree with them. Those with a Relationship Lens focus tend to define ethical success as having strong relationships within their community and working to help those without resources or power. You have no preference between the values of autonomy and equality (NP). Defending the right of everyone to choose how they will live is important to you—but not if those rights come at the expense of the community’s wellbeing. Your balance between these values may be a struggle, where you believe everyone should choose their own path but worry that such freedom could lead to anarchy or injustice. Or, your balance could be a more harmonious blend of the two values. As you balance these two perspectives, you have a mild preference for the value of rationality (MR) to identify the principles—the foundational rules—that you believe will help shape a community where power is balanced without individuals losing their rights and freedoms. Your guiding value is clear and rational thought moderated by your emotions and experience, which you use to apply universal principles as you work with others to ensure a fair community. Know Yourself Pay attention to your beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. The first step to ethical agility and maturity is to carefully read the description of your own ethical lens. While you may resonate with elements of other lenses, when you are under stress or pressure, you’ll begin your ethical analysis from your home lens. So, becoming familiar with both the gifts and the blind spots of your lens is useful. For more information about how to think about ethics as well as hints for interpreting your results, look at the information under the ELI Essentials and Exploring the ELI on the menu bar. Understanding Your Ethical Lens Over the course of history, four different ethical perspectives, which we call the Four Ethical Lenses, have guided people in making ethical decisions. Each of us has an inherited bias towards community that intersects with our earliest socialization. As we make sense of our world, we develop an approach to ethics that becomes our ethical instinct—our gut reaction to value conflicts. The questions you answered were designed to determine your instinctual approach to your values preferences. These preferences determine your placement on the Ethical Lens Inventory grid, seen on the right side of this page. The dot on the grid shows which ethical lens you prefer and how strong that preference is. Those who land on or close to the center point do not have a strong preference for any ethical lens and may instead resonate with an approach to ethics that is concerned with living authentically in the world rather than one that privileges one set of values over another. Each of the paragraphs below describes an ethical trait—a personal characteristic or quality that defines how you begin to approach ethical problems. For each of the categories, the trait describes the values you believe are the most important as well as the reasons you give for why you make particular ethical decisions. To see how other people might look at the world differently, read the descriptions of the different ethical lenses under the tab Ethical Lenses on the menu bar. The “Overview of the Four Ethical Lenses” can be printed to give you a quick reference document. Finally, you can compare and contrast each ethical trait by reading the description of the trait found under the Traits menu. Comparing the traits of your perspective to others helps you understand how people might emphasize different values and approach ethical dilemmas differently. As you read your ethical profile and study the different approaches, you’ll have a better sense of what we mean when we use the word “ethics.” You’ll also have some insight into how human beings determine what actions are—or are not—ethical. The Snapshot gives you a quick overview of your ethical lens. Your snapshot shows you living responsibly into your principles while working to build a fair community. The Responsibilities Lens represents the family of ethical theories known as deontology, where you consider your principles—and the duties that come from those principles—to help you determine what is ethical. The Relationship Lens represents the family of ethical theories known as justice theories, where to determine what actions are ethical, you consider how the various community structures—such as businesses, schools, health care systems, and the various levels of government —ensure that citizens are treated fairly and have access to needed resources. At times, you may find either of these theories persuasive. In your quest for the truth, you yearn for a community guided by reason, where each individual is principled and fair-minded. The clearest thoughts of both individuals and groups would lead to organizational and community structures, built on sound principles, that provide the needed knowledge, power, and resources for all people to have a chance to thrive. Your Ethical Path is the method you use to become ethically aware and mature. Your ethical path is the Path of the Thinker and the Path of the Citizen On the ethical Path of the Thinker, you use your reason to identify the principles—the foundational rules—that you believe are worthy of adoption and will lead you to the Truth. As a human being, you have the privilege of choosing how best to live your life. Your preference is determining for yourself the principles that you believe are the most important. Then you determine how your actions can be true to your guiding principles. On the ethical Path of the Citizen, you work with others and use collective reason to promote strong community structures and strive to treat people fairly. The first element of justice is procedural justice: How do you make sure that people are treated fairly in the community's formal and informal institutional structures? The second side of justice is more problematic—distributive justice. These conversations focus on who has access to stuff—health care, jobs, food, clean air and water, housing, and education—and who is going to pay for it. As you walk your paths, you moderate your quest for the truth with considering also what is good. In the process, you trust that the world will make sense as you ground your principles in human dignity while searching for the ideal organizational and community structures that provide the needed knowledge, power, and resources for all people to have a chance to thrive. Your Vantage Point describes the overall perspective you take to determine what behaviors best reflect your values. The icons that represent your preferred vantage points are a telescope and binoculars. Just as a telescope helps you see the farthest points on your journey, the Responsibilities Lens helps you take a long view and focus on the ideal principles that are important for human beings. When you need to examine the community perspective, you can switch to the binoculars of the Relationship Lens. Just as binoculars help you survey your surroundings, the Relationship Lens helps you focus on the playing field of your own community as you seek justice for the people who live and work there, especially those without power. Your Ethical Self is the persona the theorists invite you to take on as you resolve the ethical problem. Your ethical self is a rational observer balancing universal principles with fundamental fairness. Using the telescope of the Responsibilities Lens, you think of yourself as a rational person who has no particular identity and does not consider the specifics of the situation, including your own preferences. With the binoculars of the Relationship Lens, you think of your ethical self a someone who has information about the particular circumstances of the situation, but you don’t know which person or stakeholder you are. When examining ethical decisions, you believe in the value of rational thought. Using rationality, you try to distance yourself from any preferences or biases you have as you seek to uphold rational principles without unduly upsetting the community’s balance of power. Your principles—such as “do no harm”—provide some guidance. However, you know individuals can distort those principles to abuse power if left unchecked. If anyone’s rights as a person are threatened, you might be unable to analyze the problem from a distance, because you know that you might be in that person’s place next time. Your Classical Virtue is the one of the four virtues identified by Greek philosophers you find the most important to embody. Your classical virtues balance prudence and justice—making wise decisions in everyday affairs and ensuring all in the community are treated fairly. As you seek ethical maturity, you know you should embrace prudence, making wise choices within a specific context. You then begin to listen to your heart and have empathy for those affected by your decision. You also notice the problems caused by arrogance and injustice, so you seek to embrace justice as well, ensuring that all in the community are treated fairly. Noticing the problems caused by pride and anger, you consider individual preferences and principles in your commitment to justice to ensure your actions make sense and are acceptable within a given context. You also strive to control your tendency toward intolerance through developing empathy for others. Your Key Phrase is the statement you use to describe your ethical self. Your key phrase is “I am responsible” and “I am fair.” Because you favor your capacity for reason and critical thinking, even while considering your feelings about the situation, you strive to treat all people the same and base your choices on principles and ideals that you apply consistently. As you seek meaning in life, you balance your sense of fairness with principles of individual rights that give everyone the freedom to succeed or fail on their own merits. While you encourage everyone to be responsible for their own lives, you also know that the community’s institutions sometimes need protecting through cooperation. Without a stable community, individual rights can’t be upheld and maintained—thus the balance between responsibility and fairness. And, as you seek meaning in life by living into your principles and embracing justice, you find that you delight in your work and it provides great satisfaction. Using Your Lenses By prioritizing rationality, the Responsibilities Lens and the Relationship Lens provide unique perspectives on what specific actions count as being ethical. You have the advantage of being able to use either lens equally well—and the disadvantage of at times being torn between them. As you translate your overarching values into actions—applied ethics—each perspective provides a particular nuance on what counts as ethical behavior. This next section describes how you can use the two lenses you favor to resolve an ethical dilemma. Deciding what is Ethical is the statement that describes your preferred method for defining what behaviors and actions are ethical. You decide what action is ethical by consulting the community’s collective reason to determine the overarching principles by which everyone should live. With a mild preference for rationality, you use your reason and vision to help the community determine the best principles for individuals and groups. You want to have fair processes so people can fully participate in the community and not be unfairly targeted or accused. But you may stop short of wanting to redistribute resources to create an artificial balance because you are just as committed to individual freedom as you are to community prosperity. You believe that an action is ethical if it fulfills your responsibilities as an ethical actor, is done with care and concern for others, and respects the members and institutions of the community. Your Ethical Task is the process you prefer to use to resolve ethical dilemmas. Your ethical task is to identify principles that guide your actions as an individual while striving to ensure all in the community are treated fairly. As you balance the perspectives of the Responsibilities and Relationship Lenses, you follow your head—your reason—to identify and follow the principles you believe will help contribute to a just society. Your preference is that a fair community comes into being as a result of each individual member of that community being guided by both your head and your heart. You also believe that each person has the privilege of engaging in the search and defining for themselves what a meaningful life entails. You sacrifice and share when you think it makes sense, but you would be reluctant to force that decision upon anyone else. Instead, you hope that others recognize when sharing is needed so all in the community can thrive. Your Analytical Tool is your preferred method for critically thinking about ethical dilemmas. Your preferred analytical tools are personal reason and community authority. You determine what is true by using reason and research and paying close attention to the best solutions developed by the community. You begin with your own experience and feelings, as well as an assessment of current knowledge about the subject, which forms a solid foundation for your own analysis as you work through the ethical dilemma. You value self-management, but you’re willing to listen to good advice. You can self-soothe when faced with the inevitable storms of life, even if you are working with others who may