We will not always know the answers to life’s ethical questions. Doing the right thing isn’t always the easy thing – and it is okay to struggle with the tough choices.

As hard as we try to get it right, we’ll all eventually make a wrong choice. No one will be “Six Pillar perfect” – so just vow to do better next time.

But as you allow yourself to rebound from bad choices, remember that we owe that same forgiveness to others. Next time we’re tempted to judge another person’s decisions, maybe we need pause to remember that just like ourselves, everyone else is just trying to get it right too.

“As you go forward in life, you will be confronted with questions every day that test your morals. The questions will get tougher and the consequences will become more severe. Think carefully and for your sake, do the right thing, not the easy thing.”

This isn’t a quote from someone here on The Ray Center team, and it probably isn’t from who you would expect. This is part of a graduation speech from Dennis Kozlowki, the former CEO of Tyco. Mr. Kozlowksi gave this address just two weeks before he was indicted (and later convicted) of misappropriating more than $400 million of company funds.

There are many lessons to be learned from corporate scandals and how it relates to business ethics. But, let’s take a glimpse at the lessons we can learn personally from stories like this.

Reputation
Mr. Kozlowski was right. The decisions often do get tougher and hold potentially severe consequences, including damaging our reputations. Warren Buffet, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, has said, “It takes 20-years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” This is why it is so important to have a good decision making process when faced with the tough choices. We are only given one chance at doing the right thing when faced with a big decision.

Here are three guidelines to help you make ethical choices from our friends at the Josephson Institute of Ethics:

• Ethical decisions take into account the interests and well being of everyone likely to be affected by your actions.
• Ethical decisions put the core values of trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship above others.
• If its necessary to violate one ethical core value to honor another, do what will produce the greatest amount of good in the long run.

Try these three tips out the next time you have a tough decision to make. And, don’t forget – your reputation may depend on the outcome.

We’ll continue this topic in the next blog post, which will focus on “struggling visibly”. Do we allow others to fail ethically as long as they are trying? Do we expect more some people than others?

We’re proud to be hosting a Character Development Seminar from the Josephson Institute of Ethics this week on the Drake University campus. In addition to all of our Iowa staff, we’ve invited our trainers and some key community volunteers to join us.

We spent a good deal of time yesterday talking about values. Afterward, a school administrator mentioned that she is rethinking her school’s community service program. The school mandates community service as a graduation requirement. What was the reason that prompted her to question their program? Our values discussion – specifically pragmatic values (what is useful or what works), pleasure values (what we want or desire) and ethical values (what we think is right). The administrator was questioning the worth of the community service program. Was it still a valuable requirement if the students were doing community service because it was required, not because it was the right thing to do?

Of course, in this situation students could participate both because it was the right thing to do and because it was required. Additionally, they could begin the program with one value and end with another. However, it does prompt some interesting thoughts.

Think about your values and why they are important to you. Which values are based on what is useful for you or are what you desire? Which of your values are based on what you think is right?

We took some time out to take a photo of the group participating in the training.

As social media continues to grow in popularity, we are faced with new ethical challenges when we put ourselves online for the world to see.

It could be simply stated that participating in social networking is ultimately a test of your integrity. Is what you do and say online consistent with what you do and say in real life? If we act with integrity, our values do not change when we are online.

We’ve all maybe heard stories about individuals who have posted something online that they “shouldn’t have”. Maybe it was distasteful. Would a distasteful post from a person who was a self-proclaimed distasteful person surprise us? No. It grabs our attention when someone’s values are inconsistent from word to action.

Integrity aside, maybe part of the problem is that we have yet to really comprehend the powerful and global nature of the internet. By posting photos or thoughts on social networking sites (or the internet in general) we have put them out for public consumption. We can’t assume that photos posted on our Facebook page will only be seen by our Facebook friends.

Ever heard the old adage “Don’t do anything that you would not want on the front page of the paper”? This is a great test for our every day actions – and a great test for what we’d put online. Assume that anything you put online has the capability to land on the front page of the newspaper. Because it could.