Dirk had never given much thought to character, ethics, or whatever you called it. He just pretty much did what he thought, he assumed like everyone else did. Yet after working for the same company owner for a few years, Dirk began to see something different in the owner that Dirk thought might have had something to do with why he was the owner. When the owner had first hired Dirk, Dirk had assumed that the owner had inherited the company. When Dirk later learned that the owner had built the company up from scratch himself, Dirk began to study the owner for the attributes that might have enabled him to do so. Sure enough, Dirk soon saw that the owner was different in certain respects. And then Dirk realized that the owner’s difference was affecting Dirk and everyone else in the company. Maybe character and ethics had something to them after all.
Ethics
As the prior chapter indicates, ethics is a third dimension, along with knowledge and skill, of job success. For job success, you generally need more than just knowing what to do and how to do it. You also need sound reasons or motivations for doing the work, honestly and consistently, with reasonable devotion to the task. Job ethics are an expression of the values one holds, the perspective through which one views the world of work, and the deeper commitments or truths that one embraces that generate one’s thoughts and actions at work. You may not think much about ethics at work for the very reason that the values and commitments that generate ethics lay beneath the surface of things. You think instead of job knowledge and skills, and the particulars of your work, not the things that give your work meaning and that drive you toward job success. Yet that’s why ethics are so important: they fuel your drive and guide you along the right paths toward success. Don’t underestimate the role and significance of ethics to your job success.
Character
You may find it easier and more productive to think of job character rather than job ethics. Ask any employer representative, such as an administrator, supervisor, manager, or director, and they’ll tell you the kind of character they’d prefer to see in an employee. You’ll hear attributes like honest, hard working, diligent, thoughtful, caring, compassionate, organized, capable, and committed. Notice how these attributes don’t address any specific job knowledge or skill. They don’t describe what the worker knows or can do. They instead describe the worker, as if the attributes colored, constituted, influenced, or imbued the worker like magic potions. Character, though, expresses itself in observable actions. Character is not a magic potion. Character is instead an accumulation of the things that a worker says and does, and the attitudes and attributes the worker exhibits while doing the work. Job character can be either good or bad, or a mix of good and bad. Consistently do the things that express good character, and you’ll find others identifying your character as good, whether you feel like you’re good or not.
Worldview
How you view your job specifically, and the world in general, affects your job ethics and character. The desire to be good and do well must come from somewhere. Good actions generally come from good intentions. Good intentions generally come from a view of the world that accepts the value and benefit of doing good. If you believe that your moral action can help to reorder and redeem a basically good but unfortunately distorted world, and that your moral action will most often or eventually have its due reward, then you will likely act responsibly and ethically. If, instead, you believe like a nihilist that the world has no meaning or purpose that would reward moral action, and that the world is only a chance product of unguided forces acting on random material, then you will likely act without sound ethics. Or alternatively, if you live hedonistically, doing pretty much whatever you can for your own pleasure, then you will shape your work ethic and behavior to serve that end. If you’re interested in job success, adjust your worldview to give you a healthier perspective.
Values
You can also think of job ethics as involving values. What you value, you pursue. To value something is to give it high worth and priority relative to other things you could acquire or pursue. The things you value you chase after to acquire and hold precious, while letting other things go. You can’t acquire or achieve everything. Trying to do so may keep you from acquiring or achieving anything. You have limited time, resources, attention, and energy. To pursue one thing, you must forgo pursuing something else. Your values reflect the things you would choose to pursue over the things you would have to let go to do so. You may, for instance, generally value security over adventure, prudence over valor, or honesty over gain, although everything must have its context to truly know. And that’s the point. Values help you take a longer and deeper view rather than jumping at every opportunity that comes along. Build your job success around values more so than opportunism. Opportunism takes the short view, when the short view can cost you long run success. Guide your job actions by your values, and choose your values to align with job success. Value honesty, competence, diligence, and excellence, and other values that align with your job and field.
Codes
Ethics may also have their expression in a specific code attached to your work, especially if you work in a profession. Codes of ethics turn the aspirations of a field into specifics. If your profession’s commitment includes respecting the autonomy and privacy of clients or patients, then your profession’s code of ethics might include confidentiality and informed-consent rules. If your profession’s values include trust and public confidence, then your profession’s code of ethics might include rules for the proper handling of client property, against deceptive practices, and for removal of professionals with addiction, dishonesty, corruption, or violence issues. You should unquestionably know and follow any code of ethics that applies to your profession or trade, or the performance of your job. You may even have a duty to report unprofessionalism by co-workers or others in whose work you’re involved. Raise any professionalism issues with your supervisor and, if your supervisor doesn’t have a sound explanation for them, then with an ethics hotline or other ethics official in your field. Don’t proceed on any work issue without first clarifying any lingering ethics questions.
Discipline
Violations of an ethics code applying to your work can result in discipline of one form or another. If you hold a license or certification authorizing your work, then the licensing body very likely has statutory or regulatory authority to discipline your license. Not just doctors and lawyers but also accountants, engineers, teachers, social workers, counselors, and cosmetologists, among dozens of other workers, depend on state licensure or certification to continue doing their jobs. Suspension or revocation of your license or certification may mean instant loss of your job. Even a lesser form of discipline like a reprimand or probation may spur your employer to relieve you of your job, for liability, reputation, and risk-management purposes. Again, avoid all conduct that may risk discipline. Clarify your ethics rules with a sound supervisor or an ethics official before proceeding on questionable issues. And if you face license discipline charges, get a qualified license defense attorney to represent you. Ethics officials with your state licensing body are your friends when you have a question of what to do or not to do. They’re your adversaries once you face ethics charges. Get help to preserve and protect your license or certification.
Faith
To get a good grasp on and improve your job ethics, you don’t have to invent your own ethics. One of the great obstacles modern materialism places before us is to have us believe that we each imagine our own worldview, none more plausible than another. Christian faith, within which materialism nests its own science, offers a view of reality not merely as a philosophical and moral construct but also a historical fact. It provides the basis not only for morality under a Golden Rule and dozens of subordinate principles but also the basis for meaning, purpose, and motivation. The Christian God who created the good realm we enjoy also occupied, struggled, and suffered in that realm, like us, while showing us the way to conduct ourselves through it and beyond. Faith, referring to the trust that what we don’t see exists and will work for our good, is an essential component to job success, just as is religion, referring to the universal construct that brings all things together into a patterned, ordered, and purposeful unity. Get faith, get religion, and your job ethics will improve. Rely on the history, foundation, and tradition more so than your own invention.
Passion
While job success is an admirable goal, working out a deep and abiding faith through your work can take you farther than mere success, into the realm of living and working with a real passion. You may have noticed a co-worker who brings special poise, equanimity, joy, depth, energy, and insight to work. Or you may long for such a co-worker, someone who seems to elevate the work to both a greater significance and a lesser burden, while equally elevating the workers to more than production tools and the workplace to more than a profit center. Job ethics can reach deeper and lead higher than simply promoting moral action. Job ethics rooted in faith can transform the workers from production tools into divine beings and transform the work from profit making to divine calling. You don’t have to just go through the motions at work. The best job ethic is one that transforms the workplace from a mechanism of the world to an expression of the divine and holy. Reach higher in your work. Doing so will reward you.
Reflection
Who is your most ethical co-worker? What would your co-workers say your job character is? What is it that you do that gives you that job character, in the eyes of your co-workers? Which of your co-workers has the most sound and well-developed worldview, fostering responsible job action and success? How would you articulate that worldview? Ask your co-worker about it, if you don’t already know. List the values that your worldview and beliefs would have you reflect on the job. Would your co-workers say that you exhibit those values? Do you currently face any questionable ethics issues? Identify the ethics hotline or similar resource you would contact if you had such an issue, before you commit to one course or another risking ethics charges.
Key Points
Ethics are a third dimension of job success after knowledge and skill.
Think of ethics as involving your good character for work.
Your perspective on the world influences your character and ethics.
Your deeply held values work themselves out in your ethical conduct.
Strictly comply with any ethical code applicable to your work.
Get qualified defense attorney help when facing ethics charges.
You can do well to embed your job ethics in your faith and religion.
Working out your faith in the workplace can fuel your passion.