Birchard Bill - Ethics for the Real World: Creating a Personal Code to Guide Decisions in Work and Life

I would like to thank my wife, Miriam Rivera, for her insights into how to Tell the Whole Truth in more useful ways. Miriam contributed to this book in many big and small ways. More important, I would like to thank her for helping me live a life consistent with my ethical code. I would also like to thank my two daughters, Serena Rivera-Korver and Sophia Rivera-Korver, for the happy faces and whiteboard love notes that made the evening and weekend work on this book more pleasurable. I would also like to thank my parents and sister for creating an ethical touchstone that has served me well throughout my life.

Finally, I would like to thank my friend, coauthor, and teacher, Ron Howard. In addition to teaching me the tools of my profession, Ron has provided an example of how to live a meaningful life.

How the Decision Flows

F OR A GRAPHICAL SUMMARY of the key distinctions enabling skillful ethical thinking, see . Note how the distinctions work together. Do not use the figure to guide individual decisions. Instead, use it to guide the flow of your logic, depending on a decisions characteristics. These distinctions, unique to ethical reasoning, appear over and over in this book.

The figure hints at the consequences of confusing the dimensions of a decision. Consider the common mistake, mentioned in chapter 2, of putting prudential actions in the ethical bucket. If we do so, we mistakenly go through a long decision-making process (top to bottom on the chart) instead of a short one (left to right).

The critical elements of ethical thinking

Three Examples

O N THE FOLLOWING PAGES are the texts of three ethical codes written by three students who followed the advice in this book. The students produced these codes as a part of either Ron Howards course at Stanford University or Clint Korvers course at Grinnell College. We have changed the students names to protect their privacy, and we have edited the codes lightly to make them suitable for publication.

These are not model or textbook codes. They are long and not always eloquent. But publishing the perfect code would give a misleading idea about the way codes turn out in real life. Whats important is that the codes allow each person to address personally important issues at a particular moment in their life. The codes represent a journey of personal reflection, a journey necessary for skillful ethical decision making.

For a helpful exercise (suggested at the end of chapter 4), review and annotate these codes to show where they clearly follow or diverge from the advice in this book. Then turn back to your own code, and with the benefit of this added reflection, refine your code.