THE ETHICAL BLIND SPOT

Phuoc D. Nguyen

Some leaders implement unethical behavior and decision-making but they don’t know and detect the ethical blind spot or they know and identify the ethical blind spot, but they have intended to implement the unethical behavior purposefully, which leads to motivated blindness. “Motivated blindness can cause people at the highest levels of society to engage in behaviors that they would never condone with greater awareness.” (Bazerman & Tenbrunsel, 2011, p. 84). Sezer, Gino, and Bazerman (2015) review research on unintended unethical behavior by focusing on three sources of ethical blind spots: (1) implicit biases, (2) temporal distance from an ethical dilemma, and (3) decision biases that lead people to disregard and misevaluate others’ ethical lapses. Gino (2015) suggests the steps involved in ethical decision-making include ethical awareness, ethical judgment, and ethical behavior; behavior can rise into ethical behavior, unintentional unethical behavior, and intentional unethical behavior. Ethical awareness generates understanding, thinking, and concern on ethics, wrong thing, and right thing; ethical awareness is the foundation of ethical judgment, ethical behavior, and ethical decision-making but if ethical awareness is weak, it is also the foundation of wrong ethical judgment, unethical behavior,  unintentional unethical behavior, and intentional unethical behavior. Therefore, unintentional unethical behavior includes ethical blind spots. Implicit biases have a serious impact on unethical decision-making. Ethical awareness is weak, this leads to weak ethical judgment, and weak ethical judgment leads to a leader who is under unintentional unethical behavior and decision-making. However, if ethical awareness is moderate, this may lead to intentional unethical behavior, ethical awareness impacts ethical judgment to create engagement in unethical behavior.