Ethics in communication is an ever-changing aspect of our everyday lives. As technologies, like the Internet or medical science, advance, we are faced with an ever-increasing amount of ethical dilemmas in how we communicate. Coping with so many new ethical choices has forced many corporations and individuals to rethink how to approach the sharing and safeguarding of information that they posses. This change has led to many debates on what is modern day ethical communication. Additionally, for the first time, we see organizations forming to name standards for corporations to follow in the ethical use of communication.
Ethics in Communication with Others
Any discussion of ethics, or ethical behavior, must start with a definition of what exactly ethics are. Most people assume that unethical behavior always involves something illegal, which is simply untrue. Take the example of slavery, which we know was legal in this country at some point in the last 150 years. We all agree that even though slavery was the norm at the time and sanctioned by the government, it was still an unethical practice. Some examples of where we see failures in ethical communication are the cases of Enron, MCI, and Tyco. All of these large corporations used unethical communication simply for their own gain. If no system is put into place to monitor whether a corporation, an organization, or the government is communicating to its stakeholders ethically or not, these types of scenarios will play out over and over again. In the workplace, many of us have seen unethical communication practices by the companies for whom we work. Adjusting our behavior in these situations is important if we are ever going to break the cycle that has been going on for far too long.
One of the first i ...