Personal Ethics Development - Research Paper Example

 PERSONAL ETHICS DEVELOPMENT Ethics is concerned with issues of moral rightness and wrongness of decisions and actions. It is somewhat linked with the field of philosophy and it relates to the morality of any decision or any act performed. “The field of ethics (or moral philosophy) involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior. Philosophers today usually divide ethical theories into three general subject areas: metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics.” (Ethics, IEP) Metaethics is concerned with the origin of the ethics in one person and what those ethics mean to that particular being. Normative ethics can be considered as a more practical method than just and inquiring one, it involves in communicating the pros and the cons of performing different sorts of activities e.g. what will good deeds earn a person or what sort of a punishment might a person face if he does some wrongful deed. Finally, applied ethics is primarily concerned with special scenarios and issues that keep taking birth in today’s evolving society. These issues are very subjective issues that need a lot of debate and argument and still they cannot be concluded unanimously e.g. should abortion be considered ethical? Or should homosexuality be given a legal status, etc. Each and every person faces different sort of ethical dilemmas and each and everyone has their own way of looking at those situations and solving them. These ethical dilemmas have also ruffled me up sometimes and I have tried to solve them in the most efficient and ethical manner, though it might seem unethical to some as well. Ethical issues are such that there cannot be one single answer or a solution. Everyone has their own perspective, mine might seem different to others as theirs might seem odd to me. The primary source for me to learn and apply ethical practices has been my parents, as with every child, their basic learning church is their own parents. Besides parents, educational institutions are the second most influential place to learn something and for me it has been a very good learning place. The usual and the most common ethical predicament any student faces is the big question about cheating and forgery, many consider it a normal phenomenon, some consider it as an opportunity that should be availed whenever available while some may consider it totally unethical and I am one of the later ones. As a student, during the childhood days, I had to just abide by the laws and the regulations set up by my parents and my teachers. This reminds me of the Teleological approach to ethics where the theory is a totally bound by the consequence, it is a result oriented approach where the outcome of an action is important and the correctness of the action depends on the outcome of those actions taken, e.g. Getting afraid of parents if scoring below average marks, etc. (Neill, 2005) But as time as progressed I consider myself to have a Pragmatic approach. This pragmatic approach is based upon the theory of relativism. “Ethical relativism is the theory that holds that morality is relative to the norms of one's culture. That is, whether an action is right or wrong depends on the moral norms of the society in which it is practiced. The same action may be morally right in one society but be morally wrong in another”. For a pragmatist there are no particular set of rules, a pragmatist considers the rules to be changing every time. (Ethical Relativism, Velasquez et al, 1992) Ethics are an important part of the business world today. They not only help to run business smoothly but also help to ensure that the business is running proper corporate financial reports. And these corporate financial reports then help to analyze the company’s position in the market. To ensure that the company is abiding by the laws of corporate governance the code of ethics have been introduced by the Financial Executives International (FEI). These code of ethics help to ensure that the individuals who control the company’s infrastructure are recognizing their duties when it comes to financial decision making. Moreover these ethics greatly help in helping these individuals to take proper financial decisions in the business. Within a company a code of ethics is developed to which every individual of the company has to abide. However in some situations the code of ethics is not followed by the newer employees and they tend to break the codes. This in turn violates the code of ethics and the financial decisions become distorted. An example can be cited here about the senior financial officers who are already working in the company. These financial officers know that the information of the company should be kept confidential whereas if a new financial officer comes and he is unaware of the fact he might the leak the information out. And because of this leakage the financial decisions now taken would be not that effective. Similarly the code of ethics also mandates it on the employees that they do not use the resources of the company inefficiently. However the company cannot measure all the minute activities of these employees and in order to abide by the code of ethics a company would be forced to involve more finances towards the check and balance of employees. While making financial decisions in compliance with the ethics it is necessary to see that the individuals who are involved do not have any personal or professional relationship with the issue. This can affect the financial decision making as the individuals who would have personal gains would tend to distort important information about the company. (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, 2009) BIBLIOGRAPHY Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (Great Britain). (2009). Professional accountant. ACCA complete text, paper P1. Wokingham, Berkshire: Kaplan Pub. Ethical Relativism, Developed by Manuel Velasquez, Claire Andre, Thomas Shanks, S.J., and Michael J. Meyer, 1992 http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/ethicalrelativism.html Ethics, IEP http://www.iep.utm.edu/ethics/ Outdoor Education, Ethics, & Moral Development by James Neill, 2005 http://wilderdom.com/EthicsMoralDevelopment.htm Read More