Three frameworks for ethical problem-solving in business and the  (Page 8/10)

Ethics tests for solution evaluation

Three ethics tests (reversibility,harm/beneficence, and public identification) encapsulate three ethical approaches (deontology, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics)and form the basis of stage three of the SDC, solution testing. A fourth test (a value realization test) builds upon the publicidentification/virtue ethics test by evaluating a solution in terms of the values it harmonizes, promotes, protects, or realizes. Finally a code test provides an independent check on the ethics tests and also highlights intermediate moral concepts such as safety, health, welfare,faithful agency, conflict of interest, confidentiality, professional integrity, collegiality, privacy, property, freespeech, and equity/access). The following section provides advice on how to use these tests. More information can be found at www.computingcases.org.

Setting up the ethics tests: pitfalls to avoid

Set-Up Pitfalls: Mistakes in this area lead to the analysis becoming unfocused and getting lost in irrelevancies.(a) Agent-switching where the analysis falls prey to irrelevancies that crop up when the test application is not grounded in thestandpoint of a single agent, (b) Sloppy action-description where the analysis fails because no specific action has been tested, (c)Test-switching where the analysis fails because one test is substituted for another. (For example, the public identificationand reversibility tests are often reduced to the harm/beneficence test where harmful consequences are listed but not associated withthe agent or stakeholders.)

Set up the test

1. Identify the agent (the person who is going to perform the action)
2. Describe the action or solution that is being tested (what the agent is going to do or perform)
3. Identify the stakeholders (those individuals or groups who are going to be affected by the action), and their stakes (interests,values, goods, rights, needs, etc.
4. Identify, sort out, and weigh the consequences (the results the action is likely to bringabout)

Harm/beneficence test

• What harms would accompany the action under consideration? Would it produce physical or mental suffering,impose financial or non-financial costs, or deprive others of important or essential goods?
• What benefits would this action bring about? Would it increase safety, quality of life, health, security,or other goods both moral and non-moral?
• What is the magnitude of each these consequences? Magnitude includes likelihood it will occur(probability), the severity of its impact (minor or major harm) and the range of people affected.
• Identify one or two other viable alternatives and repeat these steps for them. Some of these may bemodifications of the basic action that attempt to minimize some of the likely harms. These alternatives will establish a basis forassessing your alternative by comparing it with others.
• Decide on the basis of the test which alternative produces the best ratio of benefits to harms?
• Check for inequities in the distribution of harms and benefits. Do all the harms fall on one individual (orgroup)? Do all of the benefits fall on another? If harms and benefits are inequitably distributed, can they be redistributed?What is the impact of redistribution on the original solution imposed?