Am I ethical? Well, most of the people who sit in the lecture concerning values, attitude and behaviour with a powerful orator speaking on their head, reminding them constantly of the importance of values and ethics, will do the same (wonder).
The parable of a Sadhu is a very strong documentary that talks about the ethical dilemma of an employee of Morgan Stanley, lets call him Mr X. (not because I am hiding his identity or something, it is just that I do not remember the name). This guy took a sabbatical and went to the Himalayas for adventurous tracking. He and his team were fighting it out in the snow covered barren areas of Himalayas and were slowly inching towards the target when they saw a person, barely clad, struggling for his life. He was unconcious and it was sure that if left alone would die in the cold. Mr. X. was faced with a dilemma of either leaving the person alone to die in the snow or escort him to a safer place, for which he will have to forgo his target and alineate himself from the team. Mr. X. thought hard but because of extreneous peer pressure and because of strong influence of the so called "need for achievement", chose to do the second. I do not remember that whether that Sadhu died or survived, it is not the main point of discussion also. What is interesting were the after effects of this incident on our Mr. X. He realized that what a blunder he had committed. He had disturbed his very own core framework of belief which we call 'the value system'.
What was interesting to see here was that certain values which we have in ourselves are very influential and important to us. They form our very own subtle, most of the time which is hidden from the entire world and hidden from ourselves too. Till we are confronted with any situation or incident as vigorous as the above stated, it will be be difficult for us to realize our subtle.
The discussion at the Harward Business school concerning this case further enriched the thought process. A number of diverse ways to handle such situations emerged out from the discussion. Some were totally blunt that recognized the goal at hand as the sole important thing, while some were more humane, I must say:).
The questions were still circulating in my mind when I came up
with this idea. I thought that most of the people in this world are ethical, it is only a matter of how they perceive themselves and what values are important to them. These values are sometimes so subtle and deeply burried inside that people do not realize that they can feel them until they are confronted with an incident or situation that shakes their whole thought process. For verification I did a small survey in a disguised manner (I am an index guy dude). I took few people and asked them this question, "Are you ethical?" Most of the answers were negative. You can expect that with people of this generation trying to project themselves as the coolest existing mortal in this planet. Most of the people perceive ethics as some kind of trend, following which is unacceptable to the present society because we are a "break the rules" generation. The question that followed was, "Are you truthful". Again as expected, the answers were negative. So I asked them, what does being truthful mean to you. This adjective is used so frequently that we sometimes tend forget the essence of it. If we want to comment on our truthfulness we will have to first define the object or target of the behavior. It can be anyone important to you, like your parents, teachers, children, spouse or even
you. The question that I asked now was, "Whether you act upon it or not, are you able to realize when you are doing something wrong and unethical." The answer to this was a
blunt yes in all cases. This means that these people are constantly, unknowingly evaluating themselves in their own framework. To do that you will have to be atleat truthful to yourself. From the above survey I could conclude that people who so plainly deny being ethical are also truthful to themselves. Don't you think that this is the value which forms the subtle of these people? If the answer is yes then we all can be proud of ourselves as we are all ethical.
