Week 12A - Module #13 - Professional Ethics and Social Change
This week's reading talked about professional ethics and social change. The guest speaker for this week was Dr. Amy Bradshaw. She mentioned a need to raise awareness of relevant issues such as equity, inclusion, diversity, and social justice in different fields. Bradshaw (2018) noted:
Expanding diversities of thought and perspective in our field - and developing our abilities to meaningful engage them - can increase our collective capacity to understand the relevance and ramifications of issues in current broader social contexts to our professional work (p. 8)
When it comes to talking about professional ethics, I was impressed by the philosopher John Rawls's concept of "veil of ignorance" that says that only people ignorant of their own identity can make a truly ethical decision. According to Banaji et al. (2003), "only those who understand their own potential for unethical behavior can become the ethical decision makers that they aspire to be" (p. 64). It is not an easy job to put oneself in someone else's shoes when making decisions. Guerra (2006) suggested that "to make professionally sound and ethical decisions and contributions, we must be aware of the factors that influence our work" (p.1043).
Social changes and the way of looking at professional ethics need to be changed. Companies and schools should create more opportunities for professionals to raise awareness of equity, inclusion, diversity, and social justice. I think that such topics should be part of required professional development across the country. Every year, professionals take some required training as part of their annual professional development. It might be a good idea to include those topics in training sessions to bring awareness to social changes needed in the world.
Guerra, J. A. (2006). Standards and ethics in human performance technology. In J. A. Pershing (Ed.), Handbook of human performance technology (3rd ed.) (pp. 1024-1046). San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
Banaji, M. R., Bazerman, M. H., & Chugh, D. (2003, December). How (un)ethical are you? Harvard Business Review, 81(12), 56-65.
Bradshaw, Amy C. (2018, March 23). Reconsidering the instructional design and technology
Your comment about the need for professional development and learning opportunities related to DEI is prescient given ongoing political squabbles for providing such education. My university's plan to require a gateway to inclusion course for incoming freshmen led our state legislature to pass a law banning (!) the requirement. Banaji could certainly be applied to that particular decision. We are getting around this law by also offering a second gateway class option, but I am pretty sure there won't be very many of those sections offered. :)
ReplyDeleteDuring this week's readings, I have been thinking about why professional ethics important. After finishing reading, I realize the professional ethics is designed to ensure employees are behaving in a manner that is socially acceptable and respectful of one another by establishing rules for behavior and sends a message to every employee that universal compliance is expected. It dictates to professionals a series of rules related to the way a professional acts towards the people with whom he/she relates professionally.
ReplyDeleteHi Claudio.
ReplyDeleteIn my workplace, the learning and development department has placed a lot of emphasis on diversity and inclusion (D&I). Since the company I work for is global, I believe there is a significant amount of more energy put towards D&I. In my previous workplace, D&I was non-existent which is scary. What that tells me is that there is a lot of opportunity for improvement. What you discussed in your last paragraph about how companies should create more opportunities for D&I ties in well with what I shared. D&I has become more of a hot topic over the past year which has been good for the organization I currently work for. That you for sharing!