Ethical Review: EMU Ethos Luncheon

Originally submitted by: barcode 2x

Eastern Michigan University's Ethics Week closed with a luncheon Friday, March 14, with the acclaimed "Ethics Guy" Bruce Weinstein. With a title like that, he must know his stuff. The chicken was moist and tender, and the dessert options of apple crisp and raspberry cheesecake were both very nice. After lunch, the presentations began. Weinstein engaged the audience in a series of interactive questions, and ran about the room getting individuals to speak into the microphone. These were general ethics questions about lying, about giving compliments, about applying for a job, and about confidentiality in the workplace. He described a failsafe approach to giving criticism, called the "Praise Sandwich" which involves wedging a criticism in between two compliments. Visit our "Ethics Advice Column" for more details on how that works. It's a big improvement over the outdated "With All Due Respect" approach. But with all dure respect, the Praise Sandwich approach is...well, it's just a two word review: It's a SHIT SANDWICH! I've always wanted to say that, and here was my chance, and I took it. To expand a little, the problem with a Praise Sandwich is that the criticism gets lost in the middle, it seems like. The person receiving it might think that the criticism is not the point of the meeting. The compliments are good on one hand; people like positive reinforcement. But the compliments might soften the focus of the discussion, which is to give criticism, essentially asking for a change in the person's behavior. Then Weinstein proceeded to lay out a 5-point plan for changing our entire society's approach to ethics. The idea is to get us away from me-ethics and into we-ethics. The five points were taken from "Oneness" by Jeffrey Moses. The book is designed to show the common threads in all religions, perhaps making the point that all major religions share certain ideologies, which is not really true. He used Buddhist quotes interchangeably with New Testament quotes, which is a misappropriation of wisdom, if you ask me. There are certain commonalities in society, but the fundamental issues of faith are not solved by blurring them all together. The whole idea of uniting faiths under an umbrella, well, I'm guessing that a Christian thought that one up. Anyway, Weinstein co-opted Moses's five points and used them as the centerpiece of his own speech: 1. Do no harm. 2. Make things better. 3. Respect others. 4. Be fair. 5. Be kind and loving. It's hard to argue with all of that. The speech we heard Friday was not misleading, or incorrect. But it was extremely limited. The speech does not help us look for work, or deal with real legal or business ethics. Furthermore, the Christian bent to the speech may be welcome in some folks' ears, but it stops short of mine. Ethics are already muddied up by religious moralism, so it does no good to further link these terms with Christian ideologies. The luncheon ended with everyone standing and repeating a page-long Ethos Statement led by EMU Business School Dean David E. Mielke. The Statement names six basic tenets of Ethics as defined within the School, and I will close by simply naming them. I'm not ready to define them, and I'm not entirely satisfied with the conventional definitions that are out there, so here they are, alone: Integrity Honesty Trustworthiness Respect Learning Work Ethic