Anachronism
Rookie
- Banned
- #21
"Ethics, morals, and values" are not "taught" in the sense one learns how to type. What you suggest honors suicide bombers who're taught by their family/society that what they do is good, moral and ethical (I suppose). In short, you have adopted ethical/moral relativism.
I totally disagree, Wry. I believe that those things ARE taught the same way that any other skill is. That's definitely the way that they were taught to ME in my younger years. I am most definitely NOT a moral relativist. I'm a moral absolutist, who believes there is only one proper set of morals and values.
Understand, ethics is part of every occupation, Professional, Skilled and Unskilled. The mortagage broker who 'sells' a loan to someone s/he knows will eventually default, but knows s/he can sell the mortgage to another before that happens makes a ethical/moral judgment as does someone who finds a wallet and returns it in full to the rightful owner.
You are correct that everyone makes moral and ethical judgements every day of their lives; both at work and in their personal lives. The ideals that I use to make those judgements do not come from anything I learned in school or college. Now in terms of business ethics, I'm a large believer in Caveat Emptor. Not that I think it's good for people to be unethical in business, but anything that sounds too good to be true, generally is.