Week 9 Reflection

There was more information about how to approach real-life situations and come out an ethical professional.  The most valuable player this week was the ethical decision making process.  The lecture and the reading spent quality time and space on explaining the steps in the process; it was the emphasis this week.  The time spent on the ethical decision making process was well spent because it lays the foundation for ethically operating in any setting.

It also gave me the opportunity to find out where my strengths and weaknesses are when it comes to ethical behavior.  I found that my strength lies in being able to quickly identify the ethical issues in a given situation and that my ethics are clearly defined; my weakness is sometimes spending too much time on the third step and letting the thoughts and possibilities wander.  I like having one main concept to learn and other supporting concepts and applications.    

This week the supporting concepts were the codes of ethics.  One thing that I understand now that I did not before was that at any time a person is operating several different codes, namely their business code, professional code, and code of ethics.  These are definitely important and very practical.  In a job, a person will be interacting with other co-workers, their superiors, and/or clients.  Whenever those exchanges are taking place or being planned or prepared for having a code that you can operate by and/or hold others to makes things so much easier and maintains a healthy, positive atmosphere in the workplace.  

 Knowing that there are regulations and ethical expectations in place creates a confidence and controls conduct, yours and others.  When the times comes to make a decision about how to approach something having the codes give you something to fall back on, knowing that you will have the business’/profession’s support.  Seems so simple but it was good to go over these types of things explicitly this week.