Ethics for the Real World by Ronald Howard

Author:Ronald Howard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Published: 2011-05-30T16:00:00+00:00

Accounting for Consequences

If we are consequentialists, making quality decisions becomes more difficult. In addition to ethical considerations, we must evaluate prudential and legal ones. We must choose which principles we are willing to compromise to achieve a greater good, and then specify trade-offs. This means that if we are drug-trial designers, we will have to ask, Do we put small groups of human subjects at higher risk to speed up our trial, while not telling the subjects, to more quickly reap gains for mankind? If we are undercover agents for a Nazi-like regime, do we tolerate complicity in a killing machine to pass on testimony that will prevent atrocities in the future?

To take the consequentialist approach, combining legal and prudential considerations with ethical, we must add three steps to our process:

Characterize consequences of each alternative.

Assess uncertainties.

Evaluate trade-offs.

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