Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Ethics vs Culture

http://www.campusreview.com.au/pages/section/article.php?s=News&idArticle=21601

This is an interesting article that highlights the reality of graduates with ethics training meeting the real world and having to make compromises.  And once compromised.... its a slippery slope.

One of the other contributing factors for this kind of situation is that once someone is compromised, society is not forgiving. So there is no forum in which to make a mistake, admit it and get back on the ethical path.  So its easier to try to hide the compromise and once you have a dirty secret to be further compromised.

This same set of problems will occur in every industry where ethics is held in high esteem and is supposed to guide the workers in their choices.  Law enforcement, health, IT, business administration, (not politics) etc...

If we are going to build structures on ethics, then we need mechanisms to allow people who have fallen off the true path a little bit to get back on it quickly and easily, otherwise we set the whole system up to fail.

Yes this kind of thing is exploitable, but I did not suggest that the system should not have a memory....

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