Ethics are important in every field of work – and for good reason. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who would disagree with that statement. Dig a little deeper, and how you outline your personal and professional ethics becomes less black and white in their application. We all face ethical dilemmas every day – situations where our ethical values conflict with each other. Often, these small dilemmas are easily resolved without much duress. For example, you value honesty and kindness but when a colleague asks you how you are doing, and you know they are incredibly stressed, your desire to be honest with them about your bad day conflicts with your desire to show kindness by not increasing their emotional burden. These moments are often those that bring you to a brief mental “pause” moment before deciding how you wish to proceed. These smaller dilemmas are often inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but still force us to quickly test our ethics each time we pause to think.
Association leadership is full of situations which can place both staff and board leadership in ethically murky environments. We often seek to build policies and procedures to help navigate these situations through implementation of a code of conduct, a conflict-of-interest policy, antitrust policies and other similar guidelines. These can be strong tools for association leaders when faced with a situation complicated by conflicting values, but do not fully resolve many situations. When facing a situation without strong policy guidance, we then turn to a variety of informal ethical tests to help us reach a decision. While there are many lists of tests, I like this list from EthicsOps (https://www.ethicsops.com/overview) that includes a relatively short list of questions, with my favorites being:
- Viral News Test: If this were a front-page headline, or viral story, how would that look? Would I be proud of the action or choice? Would this anger our members, sponsors, leaders or other stakeholders?
- Outcomes: Will this choice provide the best outcome for everyone involved – directly or indirectly?
- Everybody Test: What if everybody did this? Or, what if other associations or societies did this? How would I/we feel about that?
- Character/Virtue Test: Does this choice represent our association the way we want to be seen?
As not-for-profit organizations, there is often a harsher magnifier on the actions and decisions we make by our members, as well as the public. Do our choices stand up to that scrutiny? Even if the decision is founded on strong consideration, and in alignment with our policies and procedures, choices may not pass the above tests. That does not necessarily make those choices unethical – but does give us the reminder to pause and consider the many implications of the choices