[Associate Professor Minette Drumwright] There are many people with good intentions out there,
people who pledge to abide by honor codes in college and ethics codes in the workplace,
who make bad decisions and get caught up in ethical problems and even scandals.
My coauthor, Patrick Murphy, and I have found in our research that some people have moral
lapses because of what we have called "moral myopia."
"Moral myopia" is a distortion of moral vision that keeps ethical issues from coming clearly
into focus.
In fact, moral myopia can be so severe that an individual is blind to ethical lapses and
doesn't see them at all.
[Kelly] If everyone’s doing it, I can’t be wrong.
Everyone’s doing it, it’s fine!
Moral myopia can take many forms, but it generally occurs at one of three levels -- the individual,
the organization, or society.
A person with moral myopia may not see a problem with something like fudging the numbers on
a timesheet or an expense report or with lying to a supervisor or a client in order to look
a little better.
At the organizational level, an advertising executive might say, "I could just never advertise
cigarettes," but if her agency simultaneously has a tobacco account as a client, and she
doesn't even see an ethical problem, then she has a form of moral myopia.
[Jeff] I think that the issue that we’re blind to here at the university is
diversity in housing here.
[James] It is kind of strange that, you know, this campus is all about, like, diversity,
and stuff, yet the most populated area where most students live is just one type of, like...
not diverse at all, whatsoever.
We found that moral myopia tends to occur most often at the societal level.
Think about an advertising executive.
Assume that she knows that ultra-thin models in ads can have a negative impact on young
women's perceptions of beauty and contribute to problems such as eating disorders, but
she doesn't see any connection between the models that she selects for the ads and this
societal problem.
[Kelly] I just remember this one particular article that I read was talking about Victoria
Beckham and how, she... her clothing line.
Before she puts it out to the public, she has it fitted on her body, so that the
"normal woman" can - like to make sure it’s not just stick thin models who can wear her clothes,
it’s the "normal woman."
If you’ve ever seen Victoria Beckham, she’s maybe 5'2" and weighs, I don’t know, 75 pounds.
Like, she's not by any means the "normal woman."
In general, as a society, as women as a whole, we have a very distorted view of what is healthy...
and what is normal.
How can smart people miss these things that should be so apparent?
The culprit seems to be rationalizations.
Some of the most common rationalizations that underpin moral myopia are rationalizations
such as "If it's legal, it must be moral."
Or “If it's not illegal, it must be ethical.”
Listen to what the CEO of a major company said to me: “I think this is probably one
of the most ethical businesses there is.
It’s so regulated.
Everything that we do has to go through our lawyers to make sure it’s conforming to
law, and then our client's lawyers.
It’s really hard to be unethical in this business even if you wanted to.”
He's making a classic mistake.
Most all ethicists and legal scholars view the law as the minimum,
yet we get comfort from the law.
Guess what this CEO's industry is -- advertising.
In poll after poll on industry ethics, advertising comes in second to last.
The only industry less trusted than advertising is used car sales.
[Lauren] I think one of the ones that’s biggest, in my mind, is healthcare.
Is that for a lot of people who get to make the decisions about whether to give their
employees healthcare, whether they view it as a state issue to give healthcare, or a
national issue to give healthcare... they have healthcare.
They’ve never been in a situation…
most of them have never been in a situation, for any long or serious about of time, where
they haven’t been able to go to a doctor.
What occurs in companies -- and in other types of organizations as well -- is that someone
gets so caught up in the enthusiasm of her organization and its efforts to reach certain
goals that she doesn't see signs that should be red flags.
And then there's the ostrich syndrome: just sticking your head in the sand and ignoring
ethical issues, and we all know that that's never a solution.
[Dana] So last semester, in my economics class, we had homework quizzes that were assigned
every week.
And we would answer questions on blackboard online.
In the beginning, all of the students kind of just did the homework questions
on their own.
But starting towards the middle of the semester, we all kind of realized that we could compare
answers before we turned them in.
We, at first, weren’t really sure if it was right, but we kind of just didn’t want
to think about the fact that it could be wrong.
It's important to be aware of moral myopia and the rationalizations that support it,
so that the rationalizations will raise red flags and prompt a careful examination.
It can be helpful to have trusted advisers outside of our work unit, company, industry,
or profession because sometimes an entire group of people can suffer from moral myopia.
We don’t believe it’s us that’s the problem, we see everyone else doing it
and say, "Oh it’s them, it’s not us, we’re fine."
I think a lot of it is kind of looking... is actually stepping into the other person's
shoes, as opposed to just 'grand-standing' and saying, "Yes, I know the plights of the poor!"
Actually meeting someone and talking to someone who’s living in those conditions.
There needs to be a more healthy discussion of ethics and what is really right.
You know, what frameworks are we using to evaluate certain issues?
[Kelly] It comes down to us and our responsibility as a society, as individuals, to take care
of problems.