Happy Mentoring Young Professionals!
Have you ever walked into a room and felt a weird vibe? Or have you ever met someone and your gut instinct right away tells you that the person was up to no good or can’t be trusted? What is this feeling that we get? It’s almost like a feeling of right vs wrong. It is almost as if your gut instinct has a built in ethics barometer. But what if your view on ethics is corrupt; will that mislead your gut instinct?
We develop our gut instinct from an early age when we learn right from wrong. We trust our gut instinct to help us make decisions in life and to determine if we should stay in a situation or flight. But what if we think is right is actually wrong? What if your boss is embezzling and your gut instinct tells you to look the other way because your friendship with your boss goes back 10+ years and you know his family very well. What if upper management acted unethically and asks you to help “cook the books?” Knowing you have a family to take care of and mouths to feed, do you help?
There are endless scenarios of how our ethics can be tested. The main thing is when it is tested, to always do the right thing, even if it means losing a job or turning in a friend. Just because someone is doing something wrong, does not mean you have to feel bad for doing the right thing. If you have to turn a friend in for acting unethical, they were never your friend. Something to think about…
Please feel free to engage in the following questions:
- How do you define ethics?
- Is ethics promoted at your current job?
- Do you often rely on your gut instinct? If so, when was the last time?
Kind Regards,
William T. Kernan
Chair, IMA Young Professional Advisory Committee
Ethics, is the core of all values and like an apple, if the core is rotten so will the harvest.
– William T. Kernan