Let me ask you a question: Is this ethical or legal?

 

Ethical behavior is not always legal and legal standards are not always ethical. This means that sometimes you have to make a tough decision.

Are you facing a situation in which you must choose between legal action and ethical action?

There is a difference between what is considered right according to legal standards and ethical standards. Legal standards are mandated by governmental laws. All the statutes and laws that attorneys point to are legal standards. Ethical standards, on the other hand, don't necessarily have a legal basis. They are based on human principles of right and wrong.

In one of my classes, a doctor said, “I’m working in a government hospital and we have a rule here that prevents me from giving cancer medicine to expats. I can only give it to the citizens. I believe this is not an ethical law, so whenever a citizen patient comes to me, I give him/her double the medicine’s quantity and ask the patient to give half of them to one who is not able to get it for free under the law.”

When she said that, the class divided into two camps. One camp said that you must follow the law because you are working within a system and it is not ethical to make these choices on your own. Others said that the choice you made is correct because you are a doctor and you have to find ways to save people’s lives. (If you are with us in the same class, which camp you will belong to? And why?)

This is where the ethical dilemmas come from—when we don’t know whether what we did is right or wrong. Cultural norms play a big role in defining what is ethical and what is not. That is why we need to consider the case itself and cultural norms before we judge whether it is ethical.

In this case, just imagine that a journalist found out about this case and made it the headline of the most famous newspaper. Would this person feel proud of what he/she did? If he or she is fine with this, that means there is some level of acceptance from society that what he or she did is ethical. Regardless, it may not be legal and it can cause trouble for the person. If we search around us, we can find many people who follow their ethical principles secretly while showing respect to the law in public. This helps them to avoid trouble when ethics and legality are in conflict.

Share with us some of the ethical dilemmas that you see around you in the project management field and how people deal with them.