Inserting ethics into decision making

Cases depicting decision debacles are used to illustrate how ethical issues arise during decision making, their consequences, and the dilemmas created for decision makers. The paper argues that coping with ethical issues requires both awareness and a strategy. Uncovering the motives behind ethically questionable positions provides awareness. Countering the often-implicit incentives that encourage these positions helps decision makers deal with one kind of ethical issue. Situations in which people have opposing ethical positions pose a second kind of issue. To cope, decision makers should look for values behind opposing views. Once core values are understood, actions and practices that recognise them can be sought. Decision makers are called on to alter a preferred course of action and their decision approach until objections are removed and core values can be affirmed among stakeholders.