· web viewbefore we get started, i want to remind everyone that we are not lawyers and are not...

Conversation Stoppers

Andy: From the Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University, this is Getting Ethics to Work, the podcast that tackles the trickier moral dilemmas that you might face in the workplace. I'm your host and Prindle Institute Director, Andy Cullison, and with me is our producer, Kate Berry.

Kate: Hello. For each episode of Getting Ethics to Work, we discuss a case and unpack the difficult and often hidden ethical tensions that can make it hard to get along with others at work. And by the way, case is just an ethicist word for story.

Andy: Before we get started, I want to remind everyone that we are not lawyers and are not offering legal expertise, but as an ethicist, I can help you diagnose unhealthy moral skepticism.

Kate: So, today instead of a single case, we're doing sort of a family of cases.

Andy: So you've probably at some point when discussing some difficult moral issue heard something like this:

Kate: “I don't want to say this stuff isn't important, but this isn't as clear cut as other ethical issues.”

Andy: Or, “you say this is wrong, but I can easily see someone else thinking it's okay.”

Kate: Or, “how do we really decide that what you're saying is the right way to go?”

Andy: Or, “who's to say this really is wrong? For all you know, they're right.”

Kate: Or, something like, “do we really have the right to determine what's right for other people?”

Andy: Or, maybe they say something like, "I believe in science and pretty much nothing else. Show me numbers, show me data, and I'll listen, but don't give me this touchy feely stuff where the answers aren't clear."

Kate: And today we're calling these our conversation stoppers.

Andy: Right. And one of the things that I think can, kind of, unify these conversation stoppers is I think they tend to fall into a couple of different areas, but I think what unifies them is they prey upon the idea that the moral domain, that the domain of ethics and right and wrong is somehow murky and uncertain. And because of that murkiness and uncertainty, we don't really need to spend as much time thinking about it or

Getting Ethics to Work is hosted by the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University. © 2020

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deliberating about it, especially the murkier it gets. If you listen to some of the conversation stoppers, you'll start to see that, and those two kinds of conversation stoppers tend to either be about pointing out just how much disagreement there is

Kate: Right.

Andy: about the moral matter or pointing out how weird ethics seems and that it's not science-y, it's not based in data and numbers and, what our eyes tell us is the case. And so, it's kind of a waste of time to really be all that concerned about it.

Kate: Because you couldn't possibly prove anything, right? It's not measurable

Andy: Yeah.

Kate: with a ruler

Andy: Exactly.

Kate: or with a scale.

Andy: Right, exactly. And so those are two kinds of, I don't know if we want to call it skepticism, but it seems like they come up in situations where maybe the goal is really to just shut things down. And they can seem like reasonable things to put forward, right?

Kate: Yeah. Before we go on, Andy, what does skepticism mean in, like, an ethical sense?

Andy: Well, in an ethical sense, skepticism would be the view that either you can't know some answer to some moral question, so you couldn't know that it was wrong to do X, or that you at least couldn't have reasonable enough beliefs to, like, really make a decision on the basis of that belief, something along those lines.

Kate: Ok. Well, thanks, but isn't that good, right? Isn't there something about skepticism that means that you are looking for proof, and, you really need, like, rigorous conversation, and you don't just have firm beliefs that you'll go blindly into? Isn't that a good thing for ethicists and people in general?

Andy: It is. I mean, in philosophy there's kind of a history of admiring skepticism, particularly when it arose in an age of deeply entrenched dogmatism

Kate: Hm.

Andy: where it seemed like nobody was really questioning their beliefs. And so this idea that we ought to pause and question our beliefs has a kind of rich, storied tradition in philosophy. But, I do think, and I think a lot of philosophers would agree, that there's a


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way in which this can be weaponized and taken a little bit too far, so that, you know, really, it's just used as an instrument to shut down conversation and if you take skepticism too far, or this far, I think the consequences can be actually pretty bad.

Kate: Yeah. And it's not inviting conversation and trying to get to the bottom of something. It's the opposite.

Andy: Right, it's trying to shut it down and let's move forward.

Kate: Yeah.

Andy: So, ok, so let's take these two. Some of these conversation stoppers, I think, tend to point to either observed or imagined disagreement with the person talking. So they say, "Well, I don't think we should sell this product," and say, "Well, I can easily see people disagreeing with you," or, "Who's to say you're right and the people who disagree with you are wrong?" and they're trying to make some kind of point going from the fact that there is disagreement or they can conceive of disagreement to, "Oh, we can't really know anything here and we just shouldn't worry about it."

Kate: Yeah. “People have different opinions on this, and a lot of people haven't decided what's right or wrong, so we don't have to decide either.”

Andy: Right. Now, it's interesting that people will say this about disagreement in the moral domain, but there's all kinds of disagreement in the scientific domain. But we don't, you know, when there's disagreement in the scientific domain say, "Oh well, you know, we can't really know." You know, we look at things like who's been, you know, investigating this more carefully? What kinds of methods have they been using?

Kate: How big were their sample sizes?

Andy: Exactly. There's a lot of things that we look at and it's not as easy to do that in the moral domain, but sometimes when you've had moral disagreements with people, you can see things that might be explaining the disagreement. There might be biases involved. Some people have more skin in the game, so to speak.

Kate: Hm.

Andy: And you might say, "Well, you know, given that you have a significant financial interest in this, maybe we shouldn't take that disagreement as seriously," right? So there are things that we can point to where we tend to think, you know, "I can explain why they're having the moral intuitions they are and they don't seem all that clearly tied to ethics."

Kate: Yeah.


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Andy: Or, "I have information that they don't have, and if they had that information they might, you know, think otherwise."

Kate: Right, right.

Andy: So there are things you can do in the face of disagreement that are very similar to what you do when you see scientific disagreement to have some kind of sense of, like, "I'm not totally off base in thinking that this might be the right way to go despite the fact that there's significant moral disagreement."

Kate: What's the other kind of skepticism that can be expressed in some of these conversation stoppers?

Andy: Well, this one, actually, even I have a kind of sympathy to this. I like science. I think I believe most of what a majority of scientists would tell us is true about the world. And to think about the rightness or wrongness of an action and whether or not it's good.

Kate: And maybe even not worth doing because how could you say you were right?

Andy: Right, exactly. What independent standards would you appeal to, to sort of say, "See, I got this right."

Kate: Yeah. There's no, like, answers in the back of the book.

Andy: Yeah

Kate: (laughs)

Andy: Exactly. I mean, one thing I will say about that is while I think we can come to have reasonable beliefs about moral and ethical issues, I mean, there really is something to the idea that it's not on as sure a footing as a scientific belief. But I think acknowledging that it's not on as sure a footing as a scientific belief is different from saying, "Oh, we'll just throw our hands up in the air, and we have no idea what to do,

Kate: Right.

Andy: and it's nonsensical to even talk about it."

Kate: And that doesn't even really feel true, right? I think most people do have some sort of moral or ethical intuition. And they may be not able to articulate where it comes from or why they think something, but most of us have a sort of general sense of what's right and wrong. And it seems a little odd to say that that comes from nowhere and is not held in common and doesn't mean anything.

Andy: And the reality is science is not as science-y (laughs) as I think some people presuppose when they make these kinds of criticisms.


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Kate: Huh. What do you mean?

Andy: Well, there is a lot about science that is murky and uncertain, and, I mean, if you ask a scientist, they will be one of the first ones to say, "What we are doing is highly, highly, highly uncertain,

Kate: Hm.

Andy: and we are making judgments about unobservable things based on things that we are observing. You know, it could be that, you know, a hundred years down the line, we get new observational tools, and everything we think about physics or whatever is just going to be completely upended. But, given the data I have right now, I think it's highly likely that this thing over here is true." And I think moral reasoning is a lot more like that. I mean, here's an example. Take, like, the way a doctor would diagnose some mysterious rare disease. When they encounter mysterious rare diseases, it, it is way less clear-cut and way less black and white than I think the general public would like to believe.

Kate: No, I think we want to think that doctors always know what's wrong with us.

Andy: Yeah, and the reality is in some of these cases it's like, "Well you've got, you know, a fever, and you've got some nausea, but you also have this, like, little thing over here."

Kate: “You've got purple spots.”

Andy: Yeah, exactly. "Now, sometimes that means this rare thing. Sometimes it doesn't. But, given that you also have, like, pain in your scalp, I'm going to say that I think it's probably this thing over here,

Kate: Uh-huh.

Andy: but the reality is it's highly uncertain and highly murky."

Kate: And may have to do with what's likeliest.

Andy: Yes, exactly. And I think determining whether or not something is right or wrong can function a lot like that. It can be like, well, there are, you can get a finite list of things that people tend to think matter morally, like how much harm you cause? Were any promises made? Are there any rights in play? Were there any kind of implicit agreements or understandings? You can get a list of those things and what you can do when you approach a moral issue is you can say, okay, look, like symptoms of a disease, you can say, "Well, you know, it seems like this would cause a lot of harm. And you can say, "Look, I'm not saying with 100% certainty that this is the right course of action, but boy, it sure seems like it."


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Kate: Yeah, looking at these things,

Andy: Yeah.

Kate: I can make this pretty good conclusion.

Andy: And there are some cases where it may be that the only point of good moral deliberation is to just rule out things that you definitely shouldn't do.

Kate: (laughs)

Andy: (laughs) Right?

Kate: Yeah. That's worthwhile.

Andy: Right? And I mean, and there are non-moral cases where this is the case. Imagine there's an explorer. Ooh, let's go with Indiana Jones.

Kate: Great.

Andy: So, you know, Indiana Jones, he's got some texts that give him the location of some artifact, and, you know, he's lost somewhere in the jungle. And he's got these five different options, and he's like, "Well, based on this, this, and this, I know for a fact that we shouldn't go this way, this way, or this way." And maybe he narrows down five options to two, and then he's like, "I got nothing. I got absolutely nothing telling me which way to go between these two. So, flip a coin, let's go in that direction." Sometimes moral decisions might have that feel to it where you do some deliberation. You're like, "Whatever we do, don't do this."

Kate: If you've ruled out the swamp and the tiger trap,

Andy: Yeah.

Kate: but that's still good. That means you won't fall in the swamp or the tiger trap.

Andy: Exactly. And you at least maximize your chances that if you don't do the absolute best thing, at least you've done one of the things that's clearly better than what some of those options are that you ruled out. And you may find yourself in a boardroom in that kind of setting. It's like, "Look, I don't know for a fact whether or not this is the right course of action, but I'm pretty sure that selling this product is the wrong course of action. So, whatever we do, don't do this thing, and let's go in one of these directions instead. Which one of those is going to be better? I don't know, but definitely let's do one of those rather than this thing over here."


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Kate: So why would someone be a skeptic or have these conversation stoppers? Like, why, when you hear something that you maybe disagree with, why use one of these instead of encouraging more conversation?

Andy: That's a really good question. And I can think of at least three reasons that someone might deploy one of these, like, dialogue tactics or conversation tactics. And they're sort of in increasing orders of nefariousness.

Kate: Hm, ok, so, let's start with the most innocent.

Andy: Most innocent, I think the most innocent is that kind of the way philosophy started. Skepticism is generally a good thing, right? I mean, a lot of decisions are made in corporate life without very much thought, without really kind of thinking through it. Suddenly, you find yourselves charging forward with a strategy and no one's ever thought to think like, "Does this fit with our mission? How do we scale this kind of thing?"

Kate: (laughs)

Andy: Like, there's all kinds of, like, things that people don't think about, and then suddenly, you're six months into a project, and you realize there's this huge problem. And so, taking some time to, you know, engage in a little bit of future thinking about what this is going to look like and is this really the best option, and what are other people doing? Like that probably, outside of the moral domain, that probably works quite a bit

Kate: Yeah.

Andy: to just be, to, like, ask these hard questions. What does the data show us? What does the science show us? Like, what do other people think about this? So, it can feel like you're just engaged in just the same kind of critical thinking strategy that you're engaged in when you're not thinking about the moral domain. And so they just kind of, it's kind of part of their nature to be the one to recognize that there's disagreement and that we can't be so sure of ourselves

Kate: Hm.

Andy: or that, you know, like, you know, too many people in this industry just ignore what the science says or they do bad science. And so, you know, I'm just making sure that we're doing good science.

Kate: Ok.

Andy: And so, you know, outside of the moral domain, these tactics might actually be pretty good and probably got them far along in their careers for having an admirable dose of skepticism in, you know, high pressure industries where there might be a lot of self-confidence and just charge ahead and hope that you've got the right thing.


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Kate: Uh-huh.

Andy: So, I think that that's the kind of innocent. I don't want to say skepticism is bad. I don't want to say that we shouldn't pay attention to disagreement or science.

Kate: Sure. So, what about the next one, slightly more nefarious?

Andy: Well, slightly more is being a skeptic in many ways is just an easy dialectical thing. I notice this in my Intro to Philosophy classes when I teach them is that there's always that student who was like, "Well, why think that? For all you know, this could be true. How could you possibly know that? How could you prove that?" Right? And it's a question that almost always applies. You can almost always challenge someone's knowledge, so you can always ask a question that's not silly

Kate: Yeah.

Andy: because it's like, "How do you know that?"

Kate: Yeah.

Andy: That is, that is almost never going to seem like a silly question. So, you know, a student, rather than advancing a positive philosophical position, finds it easier to advance a negative how do you know this thing rather than advance, like, an idea of their own.

Kate: Sure, and this is where it may seem rigorous

Andy: Right.

Kate: and that someone's really doing the work, but instead they're just poking holes in anything presented and not doing the real work.

Andy: Yeah, it's a safe; it's generally a safe question. You won't ever seem stupid for asking, "How do you know that thing?" Right? “How could you possibly know that thing?” Right? Or, “there's a lot of disagreement. How do we resolve the disagreement?” That rarely ever seems like a bad question. So someone who's sort of insecure in their contributions to the conversation, you know, they can carve out a little niche by being the contrarian.

Kate: Yeah.

Andy: And by the way, full disclosure, I think I'm sometimes that person.

Kate: I bet most philosophers are sometimes that person


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Andy: Oh, yeah.

Kate: or else you would've chosen a different field. (laughs)

Andy: Yes, yes. So any of you philosophers have gone corporate, just keep that in mind. (laughs)

Kate: (laughs) Keep that in check. (laughs)

Andy: Yeah, exactly, and in check. So, I think that's the second one. It's not, like, super nefarious, but it is coming from a place of wanting to make meaningful contributions to the dialogue, that being a kind of easy, safe way to do it.

Kate: So, what's this last one? And this is one that is maybe not in good faith?

Andy: Yeah. So this one is maybe not in good faith. I do sometimes feel like skepticism is really kind of a cloak for something else underlying, which is they don't really care about ethics at all.

Kate: Hm.

Andy: So it's kind of, like, it's a very intellectually serious, “I care about ethics, but I care about it so much that I want to make sure we really get it right.” And, “there's a lot of disagreement here,” or, you know, “the science isn't really

Kate: Yeah.

Andy: you know, pointing in that direction. This is a murkier area.”

Andy: So it's not that I don't care, just like we said, “this is important" is really code for, "I really don't think this is important,

Kate: (laughs)

Andy: but I'm going to say this other thing that makes it seem like I think it's important." It's just hard. So we should be skeptical about it and someone who was a quote unquote "moral skeptic" while showing an appropriate sensitivity to cultural disagreement, I mean, you score bonus points for that.

Kate: Right.

Andy: Showing deference to science, I mean who could be mad about showing deference to science, so that you're showing deference to things that we tend to care deeply about, but really what's underlying it is you really don't care at all. It's just that's a better way to not care and get what you want


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Kate: Hm.

Andy: than just being forthright and saying, "Look, I just don't think there are moral facts at all, and I think all this ethics is nonsense, and it's something we made up to control people, and I don't really care."

Kate: Yikes.

Andy: It's harder to get along with people

Kate: Sure.

Andy: when you are open about having that attitude about the world. And so I think, "Oh, this is hard and unclear," is an easier way to be a nihilist around other people. That's the more nefarious explanation.

Kate: Nefarious nihilism.

Andy: Yes.

Kate: So, if you encounter one of these levels of skeptics or if you're having a conversation and someone stops it with one of our conversation stoppers, how do you move past it? How do you talk to them even in spite of them trying to stop it or shut it down?

Andy: So, I think there's three things. So, One of them is about strategies to engage in dialogue with that person. If their conversation stopper is related to disagreement, I think it's worth having a conversation about do we really think that just because there's disagreement that, like, we can't make any kind of reasonable moral decisions? Like, we don't think that about other things. We don't think that about, you know, disagreement in the sciences or if someone distrusts the science for whatever reason. We don't think that deep, entrenched disagreement outside of ethics means we can't ever make headway on this issue. So, how do you, or why do you think that applies here? And then their next thing is going to be to say something like, "Well, but how do you decide? How do you decide that you're right and they're wrong?" Well, how do you decide that you're right in any other kind of disagreement?

Kate: Yeah.

Andy: You've got this imaginary person who's disagreeing with me. I don't know what their reasons are. I don't

Kate: Right.

Andy: I mean, they've basically given you a ghost, a shadow of a person to respond to, I don't know what their reasons are. I haven't engaged in dialogue with them, but I know


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I've been thoughtful about this. I've tried to check my own biases. I don't know what biases the people on the other side of this might have. So, I think I've looked at my own biases reflectively, so from my perspective, I feel like I'm in a good position to decide that this is the right course of action. And that's what I got to go with because that's all I have to go on. Right?

Kate: Right.

Andy: So, I think something along those lines for the disagreement. If it's the “not science-y enough,” some of the examples we just talked about might be helpful. Like, science is murky, and it's not always highly certain.

Kate: That might freak people out a little bit, that instead of the idea that morality or ethics are fuzzier, and so we shouldn't have to deal with them, you're telling them actually everything is a little bit fuzzier than they think.

Andy: Right. And, I hope I don't get interpreted as, like, the anti-science guy.

Kate: No.

Andy: I actually trust, I trust scientific beliefs and scientific data more than I trust the data of my moral intuitions. All I want to say is we do make decisions about what to believe in the sciences that are really, really uncertain. And what we're basically doing is saying, "Look, based on the data that we have, it really does seem like this scientific hypothesis is more likely than the competitors." Something like that happens with moral beliefs. You know, based on my intuitions about this, based on other people's intuitions that I've talked to, this really does seem like the most likely thing to be the right thing, but, yeah, highly uncertain for a variety of reasons. So that's one thing. Like, there's a way to talk to somebody who might be deploying that kind of conversation stopper.

Kate: Sure.

Andy: So that's one.

Kate: Uh-huh.

Andy: Two, this is more sort of for yourself, and actually it's for yourself, but then there's also a more general way I think we could talk to people.

Kate: Uh-huh.

Andy: So, the first is to note that one thing that's happening here is the uncertainty of the moral domain is in some ways being used against you. Right? The not science-y enough, ooh, it's uncertain. Lots and lots of disagreement; ooh, it's, it's uncertain what we should do. And I think when someone really highlights the uncertainty of a domain to us,


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something about our own anxieties kick in and make us feel like, "Yeah, gosh, I don't know what to do." Right?

Kate: Yeah. Sure.

Andy: So there's a kind of general getting comfortable with uncertainty. I don't know what you do. That's for a psychologist

Kate: (laughs)

Andy: to help you with. But, getting comfortable with uncertainty, particularly as you move up in an organization, is a pretty important thing to do.

Kate: So what's the third thing?

Andy: Well, the third thing is related to the second thing. So, the second thing was getting comfortable with that kind of uncertainty. If you're not comfortable making decisions in uncertain territory, you're going to be more vulnerable to the conversation stopper.

Kate: Hm.

Andy: Once you've gotten comfortable making decisions about uncertain things, having a strategy for how you talk through your decision-making procedure with someone and explain why you think, even though this is highly uncertain, this is a good way to go is a good skill to develop. I think this is particularly important if you're the leader in that boardroom or if you're a leader in this situation. As leaders, you're hired to make those kinds of decisions

Kate: Sure.

Andy: about uncertain matters. So you don't know whether or not building a store over here on the east side or over on the west side is going to be better for the company's bottom line. You may have no idea, and you're making some very, very educated guesses. And I think it's easier to think about what you would say in those kinds of uncertainty and then just apply it to moral uncertainty. So in the case of, like a, whether or not to build a store on the east side or the west side of town, you say, "Look, this is a highly, highly uncertain endeavor. We have no idea what the populations are going to look like five years from now.

Kate: Uh-huh.

Andy: We have no idea if that interstate is going to be built over here or over here, but if we don't act now, this thing's going to cost twice as much. So we're really, we are taking a risk, but as I see it, as I see the landscape, my gut is telling me that we should go with the east side as opposed to the west side," something like that.


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Kate: Uh-huh.

Andy: And I think what you've done there is you, you've just laid that out. You've laid that uncertainty out. I think you've reinforced the idea that good organizations that thrive and advance are almost always going to have to sometimes take those kinds of gambles.

Kate: Right.

Andy: You've laid it out that you acknowledge it. You've laid it out that you've thought through this very carefully as best as you could. You've acknowledged all those variables. You've admitted, "We really don't know," but you've also noted that "At this point we still have to make a decision, so I'm going with this." I think if you can just lay those out in non-moral cases, people feel better and they'll follow you

Kate: Yeah.

Andy: into uncertainty. If they think, "Okay, at least this person's thought about this,” right? (laughs)

Kate: (laughs) Yeah.

Andy: And okay, “I can see they've got all those variables in mind and okay, we're just going to go with it," and they'll be more likely to follow you into that uncertainty. And when you do that, I think that's actually pretty easy to apply to the moral domain. It's like, "look, this is hard. Lot of disagreement here. I can see that some people value this thing. When I stack all the competing values, I can kind of see that my gut's pulling me in like the we shouldn't do this thing. I acknowledge that we may discover that what I'm deciding to do is going to have some kind of unintended consequence, and we're going to look back on this and think, ‘I should have made the other decision.’ But, just like we have to make tough decisions that are uncertain about non-ethical things, I mean in ethics it's even more uncertain. So I'm going with this, and I apologize in advance if it you know, ends up not working out, or it ends up harming us in ways that I didn't foresee. But, at the moment, given what data I have in terms of the values on the table, this is the direction I think we ought to go in, and at least I don't think anyone is going to be able to fault us, because we did do our due diligence to think through this carefully and we made the best decision we could at the time given the evidence we have.” And I think that is a kind of third thing you can do.

Kate: Andy, I think that sounds really good, but do you think that people in their workplace situations will actually feel comfortable saying, “Hey, I don't feel 100% about this. I might be wrong. I could lose us money, but I'm going to tell you up front so that you, like, know what I know?"

Andy: Yeah. I mean, they are going to feel uncomfortable because making a decision in an uncertain environment is certainly going to be uncomfortable, and I think there's a


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balance here that needs to be struck, but I think if you look at examples of leaders whom you think are doing a really good job, particularly in this COVID-19 crisis that we're in, I mean, the people I look at are, you know, people like Governor Cuomo. There was this one day he was giving a debrief, where he just, like, really hammered home the point. He's like, "Look, I can't give you answers because there are things that I just don't know. I understand you're upset, I understand you're frustrated, but don't get mad at me, because there are things that I just don't know, and I can't give you the answer." But, you know, someone in his position still has to make decisions and still has to do things that are highly uncertain, and, I mean, look at the things that he's got weighing in the balance. It's not just some money or hitting the bottom line. I mean, there are lives on the line, and he's moving forward saying, "Hey, look, this is tough. This is dangerous. This is scary, but I'm going to make the best decisions that I can based on the evidence that we have, and we're going to try and get through this." So I think that's a real good model of how you can get this right mix of being open and honest about what you know and what you don't know, what's uncertain, acknowledging that you are making decisions in highly uncertain times, even when the stakes are really high. But, you know, he does also demonstrate a remarkable amount of competence as well, right? I think when people see him, they get this feeling like he's got a grip on the situation, at least to the best of his ability. You know, I see examples of that here at DePauw University, as well. Our Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dave Burke, he's constantly sending around communications and updates that are very much acknowledging, like, "Hey, I know this is frustrating. I know there's a lot we don't know, and I know there's a lot of questions that I can't answer, but that's because we're in, you know, highly uncertain times." And, you know, he's demonstrating that right balance of, like, "We're going to be making these decisions based on the best evidence. Here's what our guiding principles and our guiding values are going to be." He's always communicating that, but also just very being open about what's uncertain. And so, yeah, it's going to be uncomfortable to do that, but I don't think it would be, you know, outlandish to embrace that strategy, particularly if you strike the right balance. There's an interesting article in the Harvard Business Review about leaders showing vulnerability, and there might be limits, right? Like, you don't want to hide behind the uncertainty so that you're protecting yourself from every single decision that you make.

Kate: “I told you I didn't know!”

Andy: Right, right. You just want to demonstrate that you're very much grounded in the facts that we do know. Here's the facts. Here's what we do know. Here's what our guiding principles are. Here's how I am going to be making decisions. But then acknowledge that uncertainty, as well.

Kate: It seems that one of the big takeaways from this entire episode is that even though ethics is slightly different from other parts of our lives where we make decisions, it's not so different. It's not this secret, sacred thing that is so murky and unknowable that we can just throw our hands up and not make any decision. You take the skills that you have from your life where you make a million decisions a day, and you apply a lot of those same things to moral and ethical issues.


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Andy: Yeah. If we are honest with ourselves about how murky some of the non-moral, non-ethical aspects of life are and if we pay close attention to how we make decisions and weigh evidence in those cases, there are some pretty easy to draw lines and parallels over to the moral domain where you can do roughly the same thing. Thanks so much for joining us as we try to get ethics to work. I'm Andy Cullison.

Kate: And I'm Kate Berry. If you have a question about business ethics you'd like answered on the podcast, email me at [email protected], and maybe we'll talk through your issue on the air.

Andy: We hope you can take some of what we've discussed here and get it to work.

Kate: If you want to learn more about what we talked about on the show today, check out our show notes page at prindleinstitute.org/getethicstowork. That’s all one word, get ethics to work.

Remember to subscribe to get new episodes of the show, wherever you get your podcasts. But regardless of where you subscribe, please be sure to rate us on apple podcasts, it is the best way for us to meet new listeners.

Getting Ethics to Work is hosted by the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University. Our logo was created by SmallBox. Our music is by Blue Dot Sessions and can be found online at www.sessions.blue. Our show is made possible with the generous support of DePauw alumni, friends of the Prindle Institute, and you, the listeners. Thank you for your support. The views expressed here are the opinions of the individual speakers alone. They do not represent the position of DePauw University or the Prindle Institute for Ethics.


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· web viewbefore we get started, i want to remind everyone that we are not lawyers and are not...

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