ETHICAL BEGINNINGS: PREFERENCES, RULES, AND PRINCIPLES INFLUENCING DECISION MAKING

Waymond Rodgers, PhD, CPA, has worked over fifteen years studying how to combine ethical considerations with a decision-making model of perception, information, and judgment that will foster better decision-making processes, resulting in an overall improvement of daily life. He has presented seminars on ethics at numerous international conferences and also provided ethics presentations to corporations, societies, universities, and other organizations such as Opus Dei. The need for ethics in society is such an important factor because many commonly held ethical values are incorporated into laws. Yet, due to the judgmental nature of certain values, many ethical values of a society cannot be incorporated into law. Ethical process thinking involves discerning right from wrong and acting in alignment with such judgments, enabling us to complement several ethical approaches of preferences, rules, and principles with unique decision-making pathways leading to an ethical decision. Ethical decisions can be difficult to make due to a misunderstanding of the decision-making process, incomplete information, changing environments, time pressures, and a lack of expertise. Ethical Beginnings: Preferences, Rules, and Principles influencing decision making explains the major barriers to ethical decision-making, why structuring a problem is necessary, and when to use information for decision-making purposes.