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Impediments To Ethical Decision Making

1. There are several impediments to making ethical decisions, including egocentrism, failing to progress in maturity, and refusing to consider different perspectives objectively. 2. Egocentrism prioritizes one's own needs and feelings over considering others' points of view, hindering ethical and objective decision making. 3. Failing to progress in maturity means using immature reasoning from childhood or adolescence to consider adult concerns, rather than a mature perspective, causing problems.

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Isabela Fangonilo
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17 views2 pages

Impediments To Ethical Decision Making

1. There are several impediments to making ethical decisions, including egocentrism, failing to progress in maturity, and refusing to consider different perspectives objectively. 2. Egocentrism prioritizes one's own needs and feelings over considering others' points of view, hindering ethical and objective decision making. 3. Failing to progress in maturity means using immature reasoning from childhood or adolescence to consider adult concerns, rather than a mature perspective, causing problems.

Uploaded by

Isabela Fangonilo
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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 4.

3 Impediments to Ethical Decision Making


There are instances when our reason runs counter with what we do. There are also instances when
our will does not jibe with what we know as proper. As a result, there are times we end up consciously
doing that we know as wrong and refrain from doing what we know as right.

Here are some known hindrances why we fail to execute what is ethical and consciously do what
is unethical. This enumeration is not exclusive. There are others hindrances out there that we encounter in
our everyday life. You are hereby asked to enumerate more based on your daily experiences.

1. Egocentrism
Every person generally focuses on her own thinking and feeling. We experience the world vis a
vis our feelings of pains and pleasure, joy and sadness, and what we long for and what we dislike. Our
experience is heavily influenced by how we think and feel and this thinking and feeling influence a lot
our decision-making.

If I am a teacher, it’s very easy to be engrossed with my tasks and needs and I may not see things
from the parents’ and administrators’ points of view. Ethical decision making needs to see points of view
that are opposed to our own. We experience that when we focus on our reasoning and feeling, we will not
hear and see what others are saying and doing.

When too much focus is given to the self, we fail to see objectively what surrounds us. If we fall
in this trap, we lose our objectivity and become one sided towards our personal concern.

2. Failure to go with our developmental Maturity


Our thinking and decision-making capability grow side by side with our age. In the words of Dr.
Carlos Medina (1998), “We keep on defining and re-defining our plausibility context.” This means we
undergo different stages in our lives. As children, we think, act, and speak like children. Our world is
focused on the children’s world characterized by toys, kiddie fun activities and food. When we become
adolescents, we leave our children’s world behind to embrace a new world belonging to the young and
energetic people. We start to outgrow our love for toys and kiddie stuffs. We start to see the worlds using
the lens of young people. When we turn adults, we leave the adolescent life behind and become more
serious with life.

The problem on ethical decision-making crops up if we fail to grow. When we continue to use the
pattern in deciding and dealing with our concerns using our younger day strategies, we will experience
problem. If we deal with an adolescent concern using a child’s reasoning or an adult concern using a child
or adolescent perspective, we will encounter problems.

3. Refusal to let go of our wrongful thinking and see things objectively


One who says he/she does not believe in hell because he/she’s never been there is a very difficult
person to convince. One who says that there can be no global warming because nobody proved that the
earth is getting warmer through a scientific instrument all at the same time in a global scope is a person
not worthy of our time for discussion purposes. If a person refuses to believe, no amount of convincing
effort can change her/his mind.
If we only base our decision on what we have experienced, our decision can turn faulty because
our experience is often times very limited. There are those who create a picture of what the world is
through what they virtually hear and see and just use them as bases on what they claim as true. Again, this
is very limited because what we hear and see virtually together with the information we derive from
social media is often times not so reliable.

Moral Courage and Will

Even if the person is very intelligent and has a lot of ideas but s/he lack the will and power to
implement his ideas, then the ideas remain to be abstract. The will is important to make knowledge
possible. This explains why we consider an action to be a human act. Our Knowledge as an awareness or
being conscious of one’s actions including its possible consequences requires human will so that it
becomes palatable. Since the act of knowing is always consciousness of something which is inevitably
linked to the subject or the knower, then It is not enough for an individual to know what is good.
What really count are his good acts. Hence, an insane person and a three-year old child are not liable
for their actions since they are not capable of acting with proper knowledge. Their actions can never be
considered as immoral. College students and professionals are expected to be possessors of knowledge;
thus, they cannot claim excuses for their immoral actions. They are liable for the consequences of their
actions. According to Aristotle, knowledge is the first element of ethical practice. This knowledge
provides a framework for deliberating about the most appropriate technique(s) by which the good
can be attained.

But, it should be noted that; although, knowledge is a requirement for considering an act to be a
human act, being knowledgeable or being aware of what is ethical or moral is not a guarantee that the
person is already considered as an ethical or moral person.

The Freedom of the Will, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, this is the power which human
beings have in determining their actions according to the judgment of their reasons. This always involves
a choice or an option of whether to do or not to do a certain action. Without this freedom of choice, then
responsibility and/or liability on the part of the individual would be meaningless. Hence, insane people
who have no control of their minds and children who have no idea of what they are doing or are not free
to do or not to do, are not responsible for their actions. On the other hand, matured people, college
students and professionals are expected to be free from doing or not doing; thus, they are responsible or
liable for their actions.

To develop the will, voluntariness is required which is an act of consenting or accepting a certain
action whether it is done whole-heartedly, half-heartedly, or non-heartedly. According to Aristotle, the
moral evaluation of an action presupposes the attribution of responsibility to a human agent; thus,
responsible action must be undertaken voluntarily (Nicomachean Ethics III). It is then important to
sharpen the “will” so that that we can become consistent in doing the right and the good.

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