Ethical Filter Worksheet

Value

Personal Source

with Examples

Justify the Value’s Position in the List. Include any challenges to employing these values consistently when making personal and organizational decisions.

Integrity I have experienced the benefit of having integrity at my workplace. I was given the task of training a difficult new employee and reporting back to management with daily assessments. My manager trusted that I would keep all of our meetings and correspondence confidential. She also expected that I would be honest in my assessments of the employee’s progress and she relied on me to provide adequate training. Even though we had huge personality differences and different work styles, I treated her like any new trainee. By acting with integrity, I gained the respect and confidence from management which resulted in a promotion. I placed integrity at the top of my list because I believe that acting with integrity is a fundamental value in any ethical decision. To me, integrity means holding myself to a high set of moral values and standards. I could have treated our new hire badly or unfairly, or talked to my team members about her progress, but that would mean stooping below my beliefs. Acting with integrity isn’t easy. It means adhering to a high set of values, even if my friends are doing something wrong. It means looking at a situation objectively and making a conscious decision everyday to hold myself to that higher standard.

Accountability I have seen accountability play an important role in the work place. My mentor taught me to take responsibility for my mistakes and to not point fingers. One of her accounts had a mistake on their pricing and we over-charged them $50,000. It came down to an oversight that she had made. Instead of pointing fingers at other people or not taking responsibility for the mistake, she admitted to her oversight and took the situation to management. She could have waited for the problem to get bigger and ignore that she made the mistake, but she took initiative to solve the problem. Instead of management being angry with her, they were thankful that she took responsibility and fixed the problem. I placed accountability as my second value because I believe that accountability greatly affects our actions. By holding myself accountable I understand the consequences of my choices and I take responsibility for the outcome. I believe accountability is the next most important value because it requires me to think about the end result before I make a decision or choose an action. In addition, accountability means taking the blame if I did something wrong. Accountability can be hard. It requires a lot of self-discipline to take responsibility if something goes wrong. If managers don’t understand or aren’t sympathetic to the employee for their mistake, accountability could cost employment if the end result is serious enough.

Loyalty My experience with loyalty is that you have to remain dedicated to the company’s mission and goals, without introducing personal interests or the interests of friends or coworkers. I used to work at the employee store of a large retail wholesaler. One of my jobs was to check employees into the store, as well as check in their family members and take the one time guest passes from the guests. Many employees asked me if they could sneak their friends in and give them the additional 10% employee discount, even though they were not on their family list and did not have guest passes. As minor as this issue seems, it was a hard situation that my friends had put me in. One of the main parts of my job was to manage who entered the store and if I accommodated all of my friends’ “un-official” guests, it would add up to large loss in sales for the store. I maintained loyal to the employee store policy but many friends had a difficult time understanding. I have chosen loyalty for my third value, because I believe if I’m not dedicated to my companies mission and goals, then I can’t know which direction I am headed. Remaining loyal to my company gives me a guideline for my actions and decisions. I can make ethical decisions based on our Code of Ethics. I can put the company’s interests first before my own personal interests. Putting the company first can be a difficult task. It can be challenging to put personal interests aside for the profit of the company. Also, it can ruin friendships if a coworker or friend believes their interests are more important than the company’s.

Unbiased Currently on my team at work, we have experienced