07/27/2018 - The Ethical Grey Zone
Emily will lead our monthly equi-tea meeting. Come learn about how considering hypothetical situations that may not have an obvious right/wrong can improve our professional interactions, based on the study, "The Ethical Grey Zone" (Casey & Sheth):
https://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj7476-427a
Meeting summary:
Each of the participants received a slip with a short description of an ethically gray-area scenario. The participants moved to a general area in the room according to their own “absolute” ranking of the “ethicalness” of the scenario.
1 = Blatantly Unethical or illegal behavior2 = Unacceptable behavior3 = Undesirable behavior4 = Slightly uncomfortable or undesirable behavior, perhaps acceptable 5 = Neutral behavior; neither good nor bad 6 = Acceptable but not particularly desired7 = Acceptable, normal ethical behavior8 = Good behavior worthy of encouragement9 = Desirable behavior we hope to foster in our community.Many of the scenarios are ambiguous because they involve multiple people; that ambiguity is purposeful. We ask that you evaluate your level of comfort with the situation and not necessarily the behavior of individuals portrayed in the scenarios.The participants then turned to the people next to them to exchange opinions, and re-rank in comparison to their neighbors.
(since there were more slips than people, some participants examined additional scenarios)
We followed the exercise with a general discussion in the room, some of it focused on specific scenarios and what about them was problematic, and some more genera. We agreed that it was unacceptable but not surprising that all the scenarios were true stories that actually happened; that context matters and we are often not aware of the full story; that while some scenarios are unacceptable and/or unethical, they still happen all the time. We were curious to see how the ranking distribution depends on the seniority and gender of participants. A suggestion was made to expand a similar exercise to undergraduate students ethical gray-zone behavior.