Suppose that you are working for a well-known construction company. Your next project is a huge private school in Brooklyn, N.Y. Currently, you and your teammates are gathering the necessary paperwork, communicating with the owners regarding material and working out all the essential details. During one of these general meetings, going over the design and all the calculations, you suddenly realize that this design is very limited, and the school classrooms will only be able to support roughly thirty average-weight kids. Well, you might try to rationalize that this is a private school and the classes will probably never reach that size, but what if one day two teachers, not aware of this dilemma, organize a project that will require that the two classes work in one classroom. The picture in your head begins to stir your conscience. This just may be the best opportunity to evaluate your ethical values. .
Since there is no set definition for ethics let's first attempt to define it. Ethics refers to standards of right and wrong, virtues, honesty, compassion, and loyalty. One's ethical values are constantly developing and changing. Feelings, new laws, social norms all have an impact on one's ethical values. It is important to evaluate one's ethics frequently to ensure that they are still reasonable, morally acceptable by self and society, and are just toward everyone. .
Moral issues encounter us every day, whether it is in the morning paper, at school or work. Questions about the justice system, our impartial foreign policy, discrimination incidents occur every minute. It is often hard to deal with these issues. How should one think an ethical issue through? What questions might one ask oneself? What issues to consider?.
The first step to in analyzing an ethical problem is getting the facts straight. This is not always easy. Some issues become disputes because the facts are overlooked. However, facts are not always enough.