How to ensure an ethical behavior?

If you don’t want to be criticized then do the right thing in the first place. The perfectionists in any profession will know this rule very well. Because they understand that if you haven’t done anything wrong then however the result occurs, no one could blame you. So how would you define right and wrong? There are many theories that give their own answer to that question. But we will not hover over that question long. There are some people in our businesses or in the authorities that commit some unethical deeds and then come out with their held high and try to describe why what they did was the right thing to do. And due to the vague understanding of the concept of ethics, they will walk out of the situation unscathed.

So, it is a necessity to clearly distinguish right from wrong. There are actually some standards that universally define ethical and unethical deeds. One of them is ‘Transparency.’ What it means is that when you are representing others by your work, they must know what and how you are actually doing things. For example government officials or political leaders almost always represent public at large. So, when they take important decisions they have to at least make the reason and the reason behind it public by means of media and such. If you’re not making known your decisions to the people for whom you’re doing the work, then you cannot claim that you were acting genuinely even if you were.

Another such standard is the corporate responsibility. This term is rather new. The recent terminology implies that when you are appointed in an office, you are expected to perform the duties and responsibilities of that office. You have to act in your professional competence and take irregular decisions to most wisely perform your duties. If some mistakes or something bad happens under your department you’ll not get cleared just by proving that you were acting as per the contractual agreement of your employment term.

Ethics is not law and ethical is not legal. You have to know that even a person whom the court could not name guilty could have acted against the ethical standards. So, next time a politician tries to escape from any guilt, you go out there and tell him that he may not be guilty in the eyes of law, but he is guilty in your eyes and the eyes of other people like you. Then maybe he will act more responsible from then on.