The trouble with ethics is no one knows you have them until you come into conflict with people around you.

 

Earlier this year I was offered a job which breaches my, and the current trend of, ethics. It is not illegal and the person was truly astounded when I said what he was suggesting is now seen, around the world, as unethical. He stated that a niche market had opened up, which he thought he could fill, because of the very fact other countries and orga­nizations have stopped this practice due to ethics.

My friend has worked for decades to improve the lives of thousands of people in Nepal, and to a lesser extent, overseas. This of course takes an inordinate amount of fund­raising. He thought that by entering this niche market he could make enough money to help fund his humanitarian projects.

Double jeopardy. Do we do some­thing parts of the world now con­siders unethical, but as I said, not illegal, to the benefit of the under­privileged? In my opinion this could backfire on him, making his current donors and supporters doubt his ethics across the board. Or am I just being too sensitive to something that perhaps his supporters are totally unaware of?

I am sure this question is sim­ilar to those faced by non-profit and for-profit organizations every day. Perhaps for the organizations that exist to make a profit for their shareholders, the line is not so blurred. After all making money is their bottom line. As long as it is not illegal, who cares if it is ethical or not? Most larger organizations these days have a social conscience—some contributing out of real desire to help (the environment, the unem­ployed, the poor, etc) and others out of an obligation and perhaps for a tax rebate.

Non-profits face a bigger dilemma, as their very existence is often brought about in reply to unethi­cal behavior (armed conflict, gen­der bias, etc) by governments and groups in various countries around the world. One organization I respect for its ethics is UNICEF. They do not use pictures of suffering chil­dren in their fund-raising campaigns or literature. To them it is unethical to use the suffering of children to raise money. Yet many organizations do use pictures of the suffering to help raise awareness and funds. We can ask, is this ethical? Does the end justify the means?

We can also say ethics is a luxury many people cannot afford. But by saying this, I think we do the majority of the population a disser­vice. We all have our own level of understanding of ethics, depending on our background, upbringing and environment. Sometimes we are required to do things in our work or family which we do not particularly want to but by not doing them the result may be us being out of a job or coming into conflict with colleagues, friends or relatives.

It can be extremely hard to stand up and say ‘no’ when those around us are compliant. But every day people take the decision to do just that. Often those people are not widely noticed, but most likely are the people who do not get ahead in their career or are called ‘foolish’ for not breaking their own set of values for personal gain. There are a few brave souls (like a friend’s mother) who stand up for their beliefs by chaining themselves to trees or machinery scheduled to cut those trees or mine the land. Or who stand up against the social norms in their society (like Malala Yousafzai) because nowhere under God’s law does it say girl children should be denied education, or that certain people are less than human and should be exterminated. And some­times we do notice these people and applaud their ethics o