Creating an ethical code helps you make ethical decisions that are consistent.
Managing your personal and professional ethics can be difficult without a solid code to help you make your daily decisions. The process of writing your own code involves understanding why you need the code and who will use it. A code of ethics can be personal, mandated to subordinates as a way to organize your business or taught to your children as a way to grow and live their lives. Ethics are also an evaluative process, requiring you to constantly consider and reconsider new ethical codes or questionable ethical issues, so be prepared to have to think about your code often.
Instructions
1. Decide who will be following your code of ethics, such as yourself, your children or your employees. Design your code with its recipients in mind. For instance, if your code is just for yourself, you should focus on areas about yourself that you wish to improve. If your code is for your employees, focus on how your code will influence their work and direct them to being the employees that you wish for them to become.
2. Create a standard for your code of ethics that you will use to test ethical questions. Ask yourself what general effects you wish to see as a result of your code. As an example, you may decide that each ethical statement in your code should be universal, applicable on both personal and professional levels and not changed by the responses of others or the individual demands of other people.
3. Write your ethical ideals down and compare them to your standard. Consider how each ethical statement will be represented differently in the two categories, personal and professional, by asking yourself what it will take to achieve that ethical principle in the different atmospheres. For instance, you may decide that honesty is an important ideal and should be universal. Examine the differences between personal honesty, telling the truth and being upfront with others, and professional honesty, making product information available and addressing client needs as more important than the value of your final sale.
4. Revisit your ethical standards regularly and consider how they are being implemented, if they are reasonable and if you need to add or change them. Ask yourself if an ethical standard kept you from doing the right thing and if you find that it has, review the standard and consider an alternative that will allow you to do the right thing in the future. As an example, if you determine that your ethical demand for professionalism is causing you to grow apart from your family and friends, reconsider the standard to determine if the ideal is best resigned to professional ethics.
