“Why Ethical People Make Unethical Choices”

While reading this article, something that happened to me popped into my mind. Specifically when I was reading the “it is psychologically unsafe to speak up” section. It was the second day of my internship and I split a full cup of coffee onto the veryyy expensive computer they lent me. As you can probably assume, I was freaking the fu- out! I was terrified to tell my boss, even though it was an accident, what had happened. But in the end I had no choice. I explained what happened, with tears in my eyes, ready to accept my fate in being fired and I looked up at my boss and she was genuinely confused! She did not understand why I was so emotional and scared. That is because the environment of that specific company did not follow the “it is psychologically unsafe to speak up” decision. Their company ran on what everyone was saying. They worked together like this weirdly knit family, bouncing ideas, and agreeing and disagreeing. There was room for error.

The section “Ethical behavior is not part of routine conversation” was also an interesting topic. In today’s age AI is seen everywhere. It is being implemented into stores, cars, and businesses. Recently I had a professor explain that businesses and corporations were going to start using AI to analyze resumes before the resume ever gets to the human eye. That’s crazy! Also the fact that many companies will not discuss this with the applicants. In turn, this is making the applicants form their resumes to have key words that are seen in the job description, so that the AI tool will flag their resume as a “Yes! They fit perfectly!”. How does that AI resume tool fit into ethics? And it also brings to question the “ethics flu shot”. Will companies only make a statement of the AI resume tool AFTER something negative has occurred? The answer is most likely yes. I believe exhibiting ethical behavior would be by deciding exactly who you want to be in your company, and not letting AI decide. This ties into what I said above about that company having a close relationship, do you think they were chosen by AI?

Gabi Luneau

Carucci, R. (2016, December 16). Why ethical people make unethical choices. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2016/12/why-ethical-people-make-unethical-choices(opens in new window)