Can ethics be taught in college

Stanford Report, May 13, 2014

By Salil Dudani
The Humanities at Stanford

Charlie Russo

Stanford professors Benoit Monin, left, and Tamar Schapiro discuss the value of ethics classes at a program sponsored by the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society.

Stanford University requires every undergraduate to take a class that deals with ethics. But can something as personal as ethics be taught in a classroom? Can classes in ethics make students more virtuous individuals? Or is that the wrong question to focus on?

These are the issues that a panel of Stanford scholars addressed in an event titled Does Teaching Ethics do any Good? It was sponsored by the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society as part of a series of talks marking its 25th anniversary.

Approaching the topic from diverse academic backgrounds, the Stanford professors who participated in the discussion agreed that ethics classes cannot be expected to make students more ethical. However, they articulated several other benefits, such as teaching students to fruitfully and confidently engage in ethical dialogue.

They also argued that studying ethics can make students less dogmatic and more tolerant, and yet at the same time more clear about their own value commitments.

Professor Benoît Monin of the Graduate School of Business, philosophy Professor Tamar Schapiro and law Professor Barbara Fried spoke at the event, which was held at the Law School on May 1. A video of the talk is available online.

The panelists who specifically teach ethics courses – Monin and Schapiro – were skeptical that teaching students the particulars of various ethical viewpoints encourages them to behave more morally.  

As the social scientist in the room, Monin noted that, empirically, ethicists do not seem to behave any better than others on metrics such as returning books to the library or donating to charity. The jury’s still out on whether academic ethics is going to change actual behavior, he said.

However, Monin, who teaches psychology and organizational behavior, said he sees other benefits to his GSB ethics class. He said teaching students social psychology, rather than moral philosophy, is one of the most effective ways to make them more responsible social actors.

“Often, when individuals do the wrong thing, it is not just because they are wicked people, but because they fall prey to a number of social phenomena,” Monin said. He added that teaching students about phenomena like the bystander effect (when someone fails to help a person in distress if other nearby witnesses are doing nothing) is itself an important way of empowering them to guard against irresponsible actions.

Similarly, Schapiro, who teaches an introductory course on ethical theory, said her job is not to show students why they should adopt certain ethical commitments over others.

Moral relativists

Instead, she wants to teach them how to constructively engage with the ethical commitments that they already hold when they walk in the door of her classroom. Schapiro connected this need for engagement to the fact that college students typically enter ethics courses as moral relativists uncomfortable with advocating for the truth of one moral position over another.

“I believe many students are tempted to shut down ethical discussion because they have no confidence in their ability to engage in it. …They don’t feel empowered to engage in ethical discussion [in a way that doesn’t lead to] taking sides and digging their heels,” Schapiro said.

A scholar of law and political theory, Fried expressed concern that undergraduate ethics classes do not do enough to teach students how they can improve society under the “messy” conditions of the real world.

Fried said she views effective ethics education as more than teaching students to think about abstract moral principles. “We are inducing a certain kind of passivity in students by focusing on moral thinking rather than moral action,” she said.

“Teaching a course in San Quentin prison, as some of our graduate students do, or working on a project to design a better system for matching bone marrow transplant donors to recipients” would teach students how to engage with ethical problems in a very different way than thinking about an ethical issue in class, Fried noted.

She said she would like to see undergraduates gain a “sense of efficacy” and a “taste for effective moral behavior” through projects and fieldwork, similar to what law students have the opportunity to do through legal clinics.

A place for self-discovery

Monin said classes like his are valuable because they give students a safe place to talk about moral disagreements. They provide students with the language and social license to discuss topics they would not have otherwise felt comfortable bringing up, such as their moral concerns with business practices they have observed.

“You see people encountering a diversity of opinion they didn’t realize existed because of this gag on morality” in everyday conversation, he said.

“Students value constructive discourse about ethical matters,” Schapiro said. Like Monin, Schapiro thinks that her class is not valuable to students primarily because it exposes them to theorists like David Hume and Immanuel Kant, but rather because it allows them to approach such discourse and teaches them how to do so more productively.

However, the scholars expressed discomfort with the idea that they have any moral authority over their students. This discomfort seemed to underlie their conviction that the function of their courses is not to teach students to behave in a certain way.

“If I thought my aim were to make my students more virtuous, what would I have to assume about myself?" Schapiro asked. "When I teach them how to write a philosophy paper, I definitely assume I know better than they do how to write a philosophy paper … [but] I’m 100 percent certain I am not more virtuous than many of my students. Some of them live much more conscientiously than I do.”

Still, the panelists were not able to cleanly detach themselves from any claim to ethical authority. For example, Fried and Monin said that, though they were initially uncomfortable with giving their graduate students a last-day-of-class talk about what is important in life, they now deliver that speech year in, year out. And that seems to be the lecture their students remember most after they graduate.

Salil Dudani is a philosophy major at Stanford.

The question of whether ethics can be taught has been well researched by many scholars and psychologists. The consensus seems to be that yes, it can be taught, though how to teach ethics is a more complicated matter. On the one hand, ethics are an extension of a person’s conscience and moral behavior and, therefore, are learned through personal experiences and influences. However, research by foremost psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg found that ethics can be taught simply through instruction. So how can business leaders go about teaching ethics to employees? What is a leader’s role within an organization when it comes to ensuring employees are behaving in an ethical manner?

The fact is, ethical business practices begin with leadership and have a trickle-down effect on everyone within an organization. Don’t believe me? Take a look at some of the biggest scandals of our time, involving Enron, Washington Mutual, and Lehman Brothers —companies that all collapsed under the weight of corruption that had been sanctioned by top leaders.

With corruption costing more than $2 trillion per year, and unethical business practices causing poor employee performance, higher rates of employee turnover, and rampant employee fraud, businesses cannot afford to have leaders set a bad example. If those at the top don’t embrace values-based leadership, no one else in the company can be expected to either.

Here are four primary “areas of action” that represent both general and specific steps that can be taken by business leaders to create the type of ethical organization that will thrive in today’s global economy. The impact and influence of these actionable steps cannot be overstated. When corporate leaders internalize them, they can have a radically positive power over everything a business and its employees do.

Action 1: Don’t Preach It—Practice It. This goes to the heart of the difference between simply instructing employees to be ethical and showing them how to be ethical through modeling the behavior. It’s not enough to identify values important to you and your organization; you also have to live those values by actively ingraining them into the culture and daily business practices of every employee. It starts at the top. Behind every ethical business is values-based leadership.

Action 2: Be Courageous. Standing up in defense of your own values and scruples may be difficult in some situations. But if your values are strong enough and run deeply enough within you, what other choice do you have? Acting in a manner that is consistent with your ethics will both define you personally and strengthen your organization in the long run. The best leaders draw on their moral courage when unpopular but necessary action is called for. If you don’t have that level of courage, I would question your qualifications for the job.

Action 3: Keep Your Perspective. Yes, as a leader you may need to work within an environment of conflicting systems, values and personalities. This doesn’t mean you must join others in a race to the bottom where ethics are concerned. There may be no more childish phrase than, “Everyone else was doing it!” Your values belong to both you and your business. You cannot give up or dilute one set without weakening the other. Leaders must set, maintain, and, if possible, elevate the status—moral, financial, and reputational—of the entity they are managing. Lose that perspective, and you risk losing everything.

Action 4: Develop Social Intelligence. Ethical behavior goes beyond keeping rules in mind. The rules are important to follow, but simple compliance will take you only so far. Following and acting on your principles rather than just sticking to the rules or the letter of the law is far more effective for your business. When you are aware not only of moral standards to follow but of the motives and feelings of others and how they are affected by your actions, then ethics become as natural as breathing.

Fortunately, American business does not suffer from the same prevalent corruption commonly found in countries such as Russia or Sudan. But future seismic shifts in business will not only test the principles and values of American corporations, they also will lead to a new breed of partnerships, in which trust and ethics will matter even more than today. To ensure ethical business practices, companies must promote individuals who exhibit genuine leadership qualities, versus those who are strictly good at ruling over others. How can we distinguish a leader from a ruler?

The difference between the two is significant. As the following comparisons suggest, leaders demonstrate integrity and decency. Rulers exhibit neither.

Leaders listen and speak. Rulers command and control.

Leaders motivate. Rulers terrify.

Leaders become involved. Rulers remain remote.

Leaders correct. Rulers scold.

Leaders teach and learn. Rulers expect and ignore.

Bosses or managers who scold and terrify their staff and insist on controlling every activity do not always engage in illegal or immoral activities. But it’s clearly difficult to visualize that kind of behavior from someone who serves as a model of integrity. Creating an ethical business starts with hiring and promoting the right people to fill leadership positions. No amount of ethics training will do a better job of teaching employees how they are expected to behave within an organization. When an organization’s leadership embraces ethical business practices, others surely will follow suit.

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Excerpt from “The Dividends of Decency” By Donald Lee Sheppard (Figure 1 Publishing, April 2018). For more information, visit: http://tcismith.pr-optout.com/Tracking.aspx?Data=HHL%3d8446%3e3-%3eLCE58451%40%26SDG%3c90%3a.&RE=MC&RI=5059489&Preview=False&DistributionActionID=83506&Action=Follow+Link

Donald Lee Sheppard emerged from humble beginnings in a Northern Ontario mining town to become a leader in employee benefits consulting and communications. During his career, he rapidly rose through the ranks of companies such as Manulife, William M. Mercer, and Johnson & Higgins. Later, Sheppard built and sold his own employee communications consulting firm, Sheppard Associates. Currently the CEO of Sheppard Properties, LLC, he is actively involved in a host of charitable ventures. He pedaled coast-to-coast in a cross-country cycling fundraiser and has had a significant positive impact on youth soccer in America, receiving several awards for outstanding community service. Learn more about Sheppard at www.donsheppard.com, and connect with him on Twitter at @DonSheppard2012, LinkedIn, and Facebook.