I took some time to walk through the common ethical frameworks listed out by Santa Clara University in “A Framework for Ethical Decision Making”. The article outlined six common ethical lenses. These ethical frameworks were created by philosophers, ethicists, and theologians to form a basis on what is right and what is wrong. The most common of which were the rights lens, the justice lens, the utilitarian lens, the common good lens, the virtue lens, and the care ethics lens. Each of these lenses are used to determine standards of behavior that are acceptable in society. However, someone could look through a problem through multiple lenses at once. That raises the question: Which ethical lens should you follow? A deep-analysis of approaches and a plan in place could make this process more streamlined. At the end of the article, the authors outline a multi-step process to coming to a conclusive decision within a group setting. The steps are broken down into five linear parts: identifying ethical issues, gathering the facts, evaluating alternatives, choosing an option, and implementing a decision. Of these steps, I spent more time focusing on what actions to take to gather the facts. Under this section, it listed out several questions to ask yourself while evaluating ethical dilemmas. I feel that this is an often overlooked or rushed step in the process. With the boom of social media platforms, people have been made hyper aware of every little current event on the global stage. Oftentimes, people are expected to have an opinion on a matter, no matter how recent the event. Individuals rarely take the time to analyze the sources of information on their own, rather trusting what is readily available on a small text. This reliance on little tidbits of information and the overwhelming number of events has led to an overall decline in media literacy within the last two decades. I believe that to form a proper opinion, people need to spend more time researching a case. It is also socially acceptable to say that you lack the knowledge to have a concrete opinion.

University, Santa Clara. A Framework for Ethical Decision Making. https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/a-framework-for-ethical-decision-making/. Accessed 17 Sep. 2025.