Ethics in Business

Personal Ethics Development

According to Velasquez, Andre, and Shanks (1987) "Ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues " (p. 6). Ethics can refer to the personal system of standards when feelings, laws, and social norms can deviate away from what is ethical (Velasquez, Andre, & Shanks, 1987).

Personal Ethical System

This writer's ethical system has developed over years of experience both personally and professionally, along with the known and unknown teachings of those who surround her. Although she does believe some ethics are instilled since birth, some are learned throughout the years of experiences. This writer believes that morals and values go hand and hand with ethics, and these learned attitudes and behaviors add to our traits that we are born with to help create the norms of our daily lives. The people we surround ourselves with can often shape our ethical systems and how we choose to act in any given situation, we need to surround ourselves with positive and good ethical situations and people.

Personal Experience

This writer's underlying ethical system consists of doing what is considered by her to be right and fair at all times, regardless of the outcome. Often, others may sway their ethical choices because of the fear of unknown. Although, there has been times when she even has questioned the choices she considered right. Just Recently, in her job, a company that does billing to medical insurance companies and privately to patients for hospital and doctors of different specialties put her in a position to either tell the truth and take the risk of losing one of its biggest clients or tell a fib to smooth ruffles for those in upper management. For her, this was an ethical dilemma, because she knew it was not morally correct to tell a fib to anyone, this was something she had been taught by her own Mom growing up. However, she also knew the risk of losing one of her companies largest clients would be devastating on her job and its reputation. In the end, she figured the truth would be better than telling a fib and having the client finding telling the truth to the client, and although they had been disappointed, they remained with her company. In the end, her ethics proved to be the right choice. It took her many days of pondering what was right and what was wrong to make her choice, and although she knew what she would end up doing it was not an easy decision. Her company had not directly asked to her tell the fib, but their actions spoke louder than any words could. During another time, this writer's immediate boss had told her to bill in a way that could be considered fraudulent, by billing with the incorrect provider for a high dollar surgery. In her world of medical billing, doing this could cause a person to be put in jail or to be