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The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.
By JoAnne Speers
March 14, 2022
Scholars and practitioners have repeatedly and persuasively made the case in this publication for public agencies to engage in periodic ethics training. Accrediting organizations also encourage attention to ethics in public service degree programs.
This column is the first of four that will describe an accessible framework for thinking about in-service and other forms of public and nonprofit sector ethics education efforts. The framework is informed by behavioral ethics research, which sheds light on why humans fall short of their intentions to act consistently with their values.
After briefly exploring the challenges ethics educators can face, this column suggests a starting place of universal core values.
Challenges of Ethics Education
Ethics educators—and those who support ethics learning within their organizations—typically face a number of challenges.
With in-service ethics education, learners often come from diverse backgrounds. They may be skeptical about the value and efficacy of being “taught” ethics. Perhaps the most salient challenge is the limited amount of time and resources organizations feel they have to give the topic. This is particularly so if the education must balance covering ethics laws (“must not do’s”) with ethical analysis (“ought to do’s”).
Public administration and public policy programs can face similar constraints. There is so much to impart to position students for public and nonprofit service success. This can mean that programs chose, for better or worse, to integrate coverage of ethics issues across their curricula instead of through a stand-alone course.
An Option to Consider: A Core Values Based Framework
Research by Rushworth Kidder’s Institute for Global Ethics indicates that humans share certain universal or core values. These values transcend differences in nationality, religion and culture. Dr. Kidder’s book, Moral Courage, explains that these universal values include trustworthiness (including honesty), responsibility, respect, fairness and compassion.
These values are a useful starting point in deciding what the “right thing to do” is. Mary Gentile adopts these values in her Giving Voice to Values framework (see here for a video summary). She also notes that “values conflicts” are a regular and predictable part of professional life—hence the importance of helping learners navigate such conflicts.
Framing “ethics issues” as “values issues” has several advantages. Some of them are the following.
Finally, the concept of core values ties into a helpful working definition of integrity. Integrity is a concept often included in organizations’ values statements but not always defined. Craig Dunn, in his article, “Integrity Matters,” tackles this task. After an extensive literature analysis, he also identifies socially-positive values as a key touchstone. Paraphrased, Dunn concludes integrity is acting consistently with positive values, across time and across roles.
Conclusion/Next Topics
As authors in this journal have noted, a clear and strong analytic framework is important to achieving the goals of ethics education. The concept of core values is a potential starting point for such a framework.
A goal of ethics education is to provide learners with analytical tools to help them “do the right thing” in their public service roles. The next column (June) will explore 1) what science says about human decision-making relating to ethics, and 2) the implications of this science for ethics educational efforts.
Author: JoAnne Speers trains and consults on public service ethics as principal of S2 Ethics Strategies. She previously served as chief executive of the Institute for Local Government, where she developed and directed its ethics program. JoAnne also is an adjunct professor in the University of Pacific’s McGeorge public policy and public administration programs. She can be reached at [email protected].
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