What is ethics? Ethics is basically concerned with the Moral obligations, responsibilities and social justice of the world. It invokes the idea of "how people should act". What is morals? Morals is your ability to know the difference between good and bad. Ethics is a construct made up of values. Ethical values include love, honesty, loyalty, friendship, trust, citizenship, caring, empathy, justice, freedom, rights, safety and faith just to name a few.

In the case of Hidalgo, based on our data and calculations, we are able to infer indirectly that the ethical values of citizenship, rights, freedom and justice are missing from the equation. As a result, the County officials acted in a manner that was not in the good of all people. In this particular case, we saw a very systematic way of excluding a particular group of people from the judicial process.

If you as a manager make decisions that are not in the best interest of ALL people, you will ultimately cause harm to a particular sect of people that were not included in your decision making process (within varying degrees of course).

The rules that a manager should follow to ensure that all people are represented are

Justice

Rights

Enlightment

Univeralism

Golden Rule

Questions that you need to ask when in an evaluation of a situation are:

1. Which course of action will do the most good and the least harm?

2. What can I live with which is the most consistent with the basic values and commitments in my organization?

3. Which alternatives best serve others rights including the leaders and stakeholders of this organization?

4. Which course of action is most feasible in the world as it is perceived?

How do you integrate ethics in your professional decision making process?