Task 5c

I have come across so many different ideas about ethics which I can understand from different points of view. I feel that this task is going to be ongoing into the inquiry as every situation is going to be different. What may be ethical to one person may be unethical to someone else or to the organisation in which the person is working. This could be due to many factors including: race, religion, sexual orientation etc. An example of this that I found in the reader is about nursing and religion and how a nurse may have to take part in an abortion procedure where this may go against the ethics of Christianity.

This is a problem that I feel that I will be sure to see in my line of inquiry, that people will often disagree with the ethics of their work as they go against their own personal ethics. Sometimes a compromise will have to be made and the ethics, either personal or professional may have to be gone against to reach an agreement.

I can now see that conducting the Professional inquiry is going to be difficult as there are going to be many different people to consider and the ethics may vary from one person to another. I don’t want my opinion to offend others who I am possibly going to be basing my inquiry on or distort their views. I need to also be open to the reasons people may have the opinions they do and why they may be different to my own. The reader helped me to discover this when it talks about the different theoretical approaches to ethics: Deontology, consequentialism and virtue ethics.

Thinking carefully about the different theories of ethics made me question what I live by. Consequensialism is a tough one to follow. If the action is a POSITIVE action for a better outcome then I would like to think that I would do something positive for the greater good. However it would be difficult for me not to do something or do something NEGATIVE for example “Kill one person in order to save 9 other people” (course reader 2012) because personally I believe it is ethically wrong to kill so I’m not sure if I would be able to do it or not even though I knew it would be for the greater good.  

This is not to say that I live by the theory of Deontology because sometimes I believe you do need to do something that is “not good” for something to happen. The reader uses the idea of lying and I would agree with the virtue ethics and place it as a “middle man” between Consequentialism and Deontology as it is about doing what you think is morally right that will contribute towards your character.

 I think that it’s easy to say what you think you would do in a certain situation but maybe you would act differently in the moment. I think that the actions that we do come from inside, we know what is right and wrong because we feel like we need to act in certain ways.

A quote from the reader that I thought summed everything up was “Now,university lecturers report that their fresh faced new students take it as obvious that there is no such thing as the “the truth” and that morality is relative.” (Julian Baggini, The Guardian, 14^th April 2007). Worldly circumstances are constantly changing, so what might be right at one time may be different at another.

 The reader has helped me to learn about analysing ethics when I come across problems regarding them in my inquiry and put them in a perspective that can be viewed from different angles.

When writing up my inquiry and interviewing people I need to be very careful of the terminology that I use. I need to “adhere to sound ethical practice” (Course reader 2012) and make sure that I don’t offend anybody for any reason. This will also create a trust between myself and the participant. I need them to know that the inquiry is truly professional and in turn make sure that it is as professional as possible.

I will need my inquiry to be a benefit to the people I am interviewing so that they will understand why they are being interviewed. If the inquiry is of no benefit then they may argue that there is no reason for them to take part as they are getting nothing out of it. There must be a valid reason for interviewing people.

Data confidentiality is another thing that was discussed at the campus session. As students we are going to have to be so responsible for the privacy of others who we are collecting the data from. This is a huge responsibility and one that we will have to be careful to go about in the correct way.

Has anyone else found that the ethics tasks have lead to many thoughts? I have found my ideas running away with themselves and it’s been difficult to stay focussed on the inquiry. Ethics are such a major subject and possibly something that I would like to look further into in the future.