Examining My Personal Values

Examining My Personal Values

When I start to examine my personal values and think about how I developed them, I start to think about my childhood days. As I grew and developed, my mother would always share what she called little lessons of life that would help me through the years, from childhood to adulthood. These lessons involved values, such as trust, honesty, respect, integrity and the importance of family and to always to what was right in every situation. She would tell me how important these were and that I may not have understood them then, but as I grew older I would. Of course, she was right. As I grew up and I began make friends and I realized that the people I associated with then are still my friends today because we share similar values.

When I became a working adult, I encountered a variety of ethical problems that required some tough decisions. I have met people that believe that certain races are inferior to others and therefore that it is "right" to oppress or persecute those races. I have also come across individuals that have decided that lying is proper if it is necessary to achieve an important personal goal. I had to continuously tell myself that even though I felt these people were not thinking ethically, they have the power and the right to choose their values and make their own decisions.

I feel that regardless of the profession you are in, all should be ethical. I know many people that are not satisfied with the ethical quality of society as a whole, and they believe that their profession is more ethical than others and that they are at least as ethical as those in their profession. I also feel that people need to understand that ethical principles are ground rules of decision making -not just factors to consider. I believe it is ok to lose; in fact, it is preferable to lose than to lie, steal, or cheat in order to win. I’ve found that most people who are unwilling to lose are willing to do basically whatever it takes to win. Ethics has a price and sometimes people must choose between what they want and what they want to be. But ethics is also valuable, because it makes self-restraint and sacrifice, service and charity, worthwhile.

Since ethics is a standard of proper conduct that should be followed by employees and employers in a business profession, I have a strong desire to do the right thing, especially when my performance and behavior can have an affect on financial, social or emotional costs. I believe that managing ethics in the workplace provide enormous benefits for both management and the employees because of the diverse value in the workplace, because of the connection between an employee’s level of commitment to the company and his or her job performance.

Since ethical dilemmas, such as destroying company property, lying about a person’s whereabouts, arise in all different types of professions, it is imperative that management emphasize and communicate the company’s standards of ethical behavior in the workplace to prevent these dilemmas from occurring. Executives and managers must stress to employees that dishonest or unethical conduct will not be tolerated, and that they are expected to report any