Handy Template to Guide Your Decisions for Difficult Choices
Rushworth Kidder: How good people make tough choices: Resolving the dilemmas of ethical living, 1996.
1. Recognize there is a moral issue.
2. Determine the actors (who does the problem belong to?).
3. Gather the relevant facts.
4. Test for right vs. wrong issues.
· The Legal Test: Is law breaking involved?
· The Regulations Test: Although legal, are there specific policy prohibitions for your organization/location?
· The Stench Test: Does this course of action have about it an indefinable, gut-level odor of corruption that makes you recoil?
· The Front-Page Test: How would you feel if what you are about to do showed up tomorrow morning on the front pages of the nation’s newspaper?
· The Mom Test: “If Mom knew about this what would she think?” This is about the moral exemplar who cares deeply about you and means a great deal to you.
5. Test for right vs. right paradigms. Both are right.
· Truth vs. Loyalty: Truth, for most people, is conformity with facts or reality. Loyalty involves allegiance to a person, corporation or body of people, a government, or set of ideas to which one owes fidelity.
· Individual vs. Community: Individualism holds that in a society where each person vigorously pursues his own interests, the social good would automatically emerge, preserving the rights of the individual. By “community” it is meant that the needs of the majority outweigh the interests of the individual. Communities speak to us in a moral voice, and lay claims on their members.
· Short-Term vs. Long-Term: Short-term concerns are associated with the satisfaction of current needs to preserve the possibility of a future. Long-term concerns are the projection of future interests in such a way that there will be ample means to meet future required needs.
· Justice vs. Mercy: Justice urges us to stick by our principles, hold to the rules despite the pressures of the moment. Mercy urges us to care for the peculiar needs so individuals’ case by case and to seek benevolence in every way possible.
6. Apply the resolution principles.
· Ends Based: Known to philosophers as “utilitarianism”, this principle is best known by the maxim “Do whatever produces the greatest good for the greatest number”.
· Rules Based: This principle is best known as the “categorical imperative”. Rules exist for a purpose; they promote order and justice and should be followed. Follow the principle that you want others to follow.
· Care Based: Putting love for others first. It is most associated with the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
7. Investigate the “trilemma” option (Is there a “win-win”?).
8. Make the decision.
9. Revisit and reflect on the decision.
Summary here.