Question

Write a one-page reflection on the following

1. Why should we care about ethics in our personal and professional lives?

2. How might intentionally developing our “moral intelligence” help us to become a more effective business professional?

Answer 1

1. Ethics are moral principles that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an activity. Ethics involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct. It seeks to resolve questions of human morality by outlining concepts of right and wrong, good and bad, justice and crime. Questions of morality and ethics can be found at all levels of society. Ethical behavior is equally important in the workplace as it is in our personal lives.

Personal ethics refers to the ethics that a person identifies with in respect to people and situations that they deal with in everyday life. It is based on values, beliefs, experience, culture and education. Personal ethics is a source of values and characteristics that allows us to make a moral decision. Some situations may feel wrong even if society deems them right. Professional ethics refers to the ethics that a person must comply with in respect of their interactions and business dealings in their professional life. Ethics is important in our personal and professional lives at its satisfies basic human needs of being fair and honest. It helps in creating credibility and good faith, improves decision making and guides us to make short term as well as long term goals. Personal and professional ethics correlates to the same values and beliefs. These two areas build a foundation and if there is corruption in either area it will adversely influence the other.

2. Developing moral intelligence help us to become a more effective business professional. Ideally, there are four competencies of moral intelligence : Integrity, responsibility, forgiveness and compassion. Integrity will yield trust, responsibility will inspire, forgiveness will promote innovation and compassion will gain retention in the organization. These four competencies along with other basic virtues such as empathy, conscience, self-control, respect, kindness, tolerance and fairness make for an ideal person with moral intelligence. It has been identified that moral intelligence affects the overall performance of an organization because professionals who are morally intelligent are more committed, continuously learn from others around them, are more humble and more willing to risk their own self-interests for the greater good. Moral intelligence requires us to attend to a moral compass or the self knowledge that empowers us to act with authenticity and integrity, true to our ideal self. Effective business professionals uses this set of principles elaborated above consistently in their day-to-day actions.