THE ETHICAL DECISION-MAKING PROCESS

Phuoc D. Nguyen

Humphrey, Janosik, and Creamer (2004) propose the role of principles, character, and professional values in ethical decision-making, they show the interrelationship of ethical principles, character, and professional values in the ethical decision-making process. Ethical principles are core components in the ethical decision-making process which include ethical principles of non-maleficence, fidelity, autonomy, justice, and beneficence. Characters support ethical principles in the ethical decision-making process, including caring, citizenship, fairness, respect, trustworthiness, and responsibility. Professional values impact characters in the ethical decision-making process, including community, service, freedom, truth, individuation, equality, and justice. Humphrey et al. (2004) classify ethical principles, characters, and professional values as consisting of appropriate ethical principles, character, and professional values. Honest with others included fidelity, trustworthiness, and truth; the rights of others included autonomy, respect, and individuation; fair to others included justice, fairness, and justice/equality; acting responsibility included beneficence/non-maleficence, responsibility/caring/citizenship, and freedom/service/community. The sequence of the ethical decision-making process is as follows: First, define the ethical problem. Second, classify ethical problems into whether or not honest with others, the rights of others, fair to others, and acting responsibly. Third, consider the corresponding group of ethical principles, character, and professional values. Finally, identify an ethical solution and make an ethical decision.

For Humphrey et al.’s (2004) ethical decision-making process; actually, it is an ethical problem-solving process that is not an ethical decision-making process. It is suggested that the ethical decision-making process as follows:

Step 1: Identify the ethical decision: classify the type of ethical decision that needs to be made from sets of ethical decisions including honesty with others, the rights of others, fairness to others, acting responsibility, and other types of ethics based on Humphrey et al.’s (2004) ethical principles, characters, professional values. Complement ethical virtues of faith, hope, love, and mindfulness as virtues that apply to all sets of ethical decisions; these are core components of the ethical decision process.

Step 2: Gather needed ethical information from internal and external reliable information sources.

Step 3: Identify the ethical alternatives: suggest some feasible ethical actions; complement appropriate virtue ethics, characters, and responsibilities and use additional ethical information, recommend all possible and desirable ethical alternatives.

Step 4: Select appropriate ethical information and use specific forms of intelligence to predict ethical decision-making outcomes based on a priority order of selected ethical alternatives.

Step 5: Choose the most suitable ethical alternatives or combine ethical alternatives as a matrix that compares virtues ethics, ethical principles, characters, responsibilities, and professional values.

Step 6: Implement the selected most suitable ethical alternative.

Step 7: Evaluate, review, and follow-up ethical decision impaction and its outcomes. Compare ethical decision impaction and its outcomes to identified ethical decision-making classification intent in step 1, and redo necessary steps if an ethical decision has not met the intent.