Ethical Dilemmas - Personal Statement Example

Ethical Dilemmas If one takes a look at the notion of social environment, one will be able to see that the majority of interactions that are carried out within this framework are guided primarily by Ethics. That is why it would be interesting to analyze the way the latter concept influences daily duties of people that belong to different professions. This paper will analyze ethical dilemmas that were faced by a fire fighter, a city budget director as a country administrator based on the interviews that were conducted with them. The first interviewee, Paul, has been working as a fire fighter for roughly a decade. He said that his work often included situations when he had to face an ethical dilemma. There was one situation that he wanted to share. Thus, there was a fire in which a family of two was caught. The conditions were quite harsh; so when Paul finally got into the apartment, there was little time to think. It appeared that we would not be able to save two people and he had to make a difficult choice: to save a teenage girl or her middle aged mother. Training of a fire fighter includes preparation for situations like this, but when it is real, the stress is tremendous (Rachels, 2014, 82). The decision had to be made in a split second and the fireman chose the daughter, since she was younger, had more chances to survive and her mother wanted him to take her to safety (Reed, 2007, 60). Several moments later Paul was delighted to find out that he mates followed him and one of them tried to help the lady as well. When he was asked to describe his thoughts during that night he replied that his mind was in a chaos; when he was in the burning apartment he knew that every second for the people who are trapped there might be the last, so he did not really have time to start a discussion about ethics of his decisions. He noted that the request of her mother to save her daughter played key role: from the moment he heard it he did not hesitate. Speaking of the lessons that he learned as a result of this situation, Paul suggested the following: always make sure that you have a partner who can take care of the people who you can not save. Indeed, being able to rely on a friend in a situation like this does not only makes the bond between them stronger, but it also able to save lives of the people which is the ultimate goal of every fire fighter. There is no doubt that this situation is a peculiar one since in this particular case Ethics is literally responsible for matters of life and death. This means that a person who is facing such a dilemma should have a solid ground for making a decision since otherwise, there is a possibility that one might regret it for the rest of one’s life. In addition to that, ethical dilemmas are faced by fire fighters in quite stressful situations that urge them to make a decision in the shortest possible period of time. The next person who was interviewed was city budget director. When being asked about ethical dilemmas that she had faced on her job, Jolene replied that her duties often involve finding the best option while being challenged with two, almost equally ethical decisions. One of the situations that she referred to particularly is the time when she had to direct a part of funds to improve the fleet of local bus company. There were two contradicting points of view: on the one hand, a considerable number of people had personal cars, so they did not want finances to be directed to the area which they did not interact with; on the other hand, some people relied on public transportation heavily since they were not able to afford a car and recently there have been some traffic accidents due to failure of break in the buses. This situation shows that Jolene had to try to find a balance between satisfying different parts of the local population, making sure that every of them is heard and taken into account (Reed, 2007, 60). The problem was resolved in the following way: there was no new busses bought, but every single of them was repaired to ensure the decent level of safety for passengers. Jolene told that she almost could feel the tension in the city: she acknowledged that for some people buses were vital since they transported them to the other end of the town to their work, while at the same time many car owner did not even know the routes of transport in the city. She learned an important lesson that time: budget is an effective tool that can solve problems; however something should be recognized as a problem by the entire population; otherwise, there would be doubts about effectiveness of usage of public money. In addition to that, the latter mattered to every citizen and no one wanted to feel that his or her taxes are being used without one’s consent. Jolene admits that when she was able to find a compromise, she was relieved since the argument about it seemed quite serious. The situation in question shows that when there are at least two parties the decision which might satisfy them both might be a difficult to find. However, it would be unethical to favor one party over the other since in this case a city budget director would use one’s power against people which is exactly what one is not supposed to do. In other words, an ethical decision in this situation would involve an action that is favorable for one group and is not harmful for the other. The last person who was interviewed for this paper was Kevin, a county administrator. He found the question about ethical dilemmas in this work just amusing, pointing out that whenever a big sum of money is involved, Ethics is always involved too. Indeed, according to him, in the course of performing his professional duties, ethical dilemmas occupied a considerable amount of time. He recalled one episode in his carrier when he could have helped an area in the county, but that would mean a temporary reduction of funding to other areas. The situation seemed just intense and Kevin said that it was resolved in the following way: people of the county were asked to choose whether to help the area or not. There was a meeting which described the consequences of each option in an objective manner. Some time letter, in each mailbox there was a letter asking people to come to the city hall to express their will with regard to the future of the area in question. It must be noted that there was some serious arguing about the effectiveness of financial assistance, but in the end, the majority of people in the county agreed that it is important to help the area in need. Kevin pointed out that the major part of the way in which he coped with the dilemma was based on the need to facilitate a dialogue between people who live in different areas. In other words, having a considerable amount of power in his disposal he wanted to use it for the good of the people, but an authoritative decision did not seem as a plausible way to do it (Menzel, 2012, 55). He also could not lie to people who come from other areas in order to convince them to help the area in need since that would be extremely unethical. Kevin believed that only objectivity of the decision might be a suitable ground for an acceptable resolution of it. This was the lesson that he learned from the situation: if people are presented with enough facts, they all will be able to come a unified vision of the situation. As one can easily see, the number of people who participated in the discussion was tremendous and they all could not be asked individually, so the resolution of the ethical dilemma relied on answer of the entire group. In spite of the fact that the most plausible solution was self evident, many people could not agree with it at first. However, access to a sufficient amount of information allowed them to see the situation from a different perspective and the ethical dilemma was resolved. Having examined all the evidence, one is able to see that ethical dilemmas can be found on virtually every level of public sector. Thus, fire fighters have to deal with quite concrete issues that should be resolved in a limited amount of time. Contrary to that, those who work on a higher level, such as city budget directors, have to find an agreement between different groups, making sure that the dilemma that has to be solved is acknowledge by everyone. Finally, high rank officials, like county administrators often have work with a community in general and provide it with sufficient amount of information in order to resolve any ethical issues that it may face. References Lewis, C., & Gilman, S. (2012). The ethics challenge in public service. New York, NY: Josey-Bass. Menzel, D. (2012). Ethics management for public administrators: Leading and building organizations of integrity (2nd ed.). Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Rachels, J. (2014). The elements of moral philosophy. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Reed, E. (2007). The ethics of human rights contested doctrinal and moral issues. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. Read More