Ethics education
Ethics education refers to the formal curricula, courses, and programs designed to convey the values and norms of a profession (Mulhearn et al., Reference Mulhearn, Steele, Watts, Medeiros, Connelly and Mumford2017a). Ethics education serves a critical role in preparing industrial-organizational (I-O) psychologists to navigate ethical issues and dilemmas encountered in their careers. For example, ethical behavior was identified by surveys of members of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) as one of the top five competencies (Zelin et al., Reference Zelin, Lider and Doverspike2015). Additionally, ethics (i.e., “Ethical, Legal, Diversity, and International Issues”) is listed as one of six foundational competencies in the Guidelines for Education and Training in I-O Psychology (SIOP, 2016).
Next, we discuss five key instructional tasks involved in the planning and delivery of ethics education efforts that might be informed by the structural lens proposed by Lefkowitz. We refer to these as instructional tasks because they are typically carried out by course instructors in graduate education and professional education programs.
Applying the structural lens to five instructional tasks
1. Establishing learning objectives
First, it is widely accepted that specifying learning objectives, or instructional goals, is a key activity involved in planning and developing any effective training or educational program (Goldstein & Ford, Reference Goldstein and Ford2002). Examples of traditional learning objectives associated with ethics education content include increasing knowledge of moral philosophy and ethical issues, as well as building cognitive skills that facilitate ethical decision making (Watts et al., Reference Watts, Medeiros, Mulhearn, Steele, Connelly and Mumford2017). However, based on Lefkowitz’s structural lens, we might suggest additional learning objectives that could prove beneficial to students, such as increasing recognition of the nature of ethical dilemmas, as well as adapting decision-making strategies to various forms of dilemmas to generate more effective and ethical solutions. Of course, this latter objective requires further research to identify whether particular strategies are more or less effective for addressing particular forms of ethical dilemmas.
2. Selecting case content
Second, the structural lens may also inform how instructors go about selecting ethics cases. Meta-analytic evidence demonstrates that cases are one of the most popular and effective methods for delivering ethics education (Medeiros et al., Reference Medeiros, Watts, Mulhearn, Steele, Connelly and Mumford2017; Watts et al., Reference Watts, Medeiros, Mulhearn, Steele, Connelly and Mumford2017). Cases are narrative accounts of ethical dilemmas designed to expose students to a range of ethical issues relevant to a profession (e.g., Lowman, Reference Lowman2006). Cases benefit students by helping them develop experiential knowledge pertaining to various kinds of ethical issues and situations emerging in the field (Mumford et al., Reference Mumford, Connelly, Brown, Murphy, Hill, Antes, Waples and Devenport2008).
Case resource libraries are typically organized around specific ethical issues relevant to research and practice (e.g., confidentiality, conflicts of interest, sexual harassment).Footnote 1 In other words, attention is paid to the overt or manifest level of ethical issues but not the structural level of ethical dilemmas. This is problematic for two reasons. First, it is possible for students to be exposed to a variety of ethical issues without being exposed to the full range of forms of ethical dilemmas—leaving critical gaps in experiential knowledge. Second, compared with manifest ethical issues that can change over time, the structural level of ethical dilemmas is likely to be temporally stable.Footnote 2 In sum, multiple levels of case content will be important to consider when selecting cases in order to ensure students are exposed to a balanced and diverse range of specific ethical issues as well as the higher level structural forms of ethical dilemmas.
3. Structuring the analysis of cases
Third, the structural lens provides a new means for students to analyze case content. Analysis of case content typically occurs by asking students to respond to a series of open-ended questions designed to encourage active processing of structural elements occurring within the case (Mumford et al., Reference Mumford, Connelly, Brown, Murphy, Hill, Antes, Waples and Devenport2008; e.g., What is the problem in this scenario? What are the main strategies or steps that you might take to address this problem? Why did you choose to take these particular steps?). In addition to such important questions, instructors can ask students to identify the particular form or forms of ethical dilemmas present in the case as well as consider how the nature of the dilemma might influence their approach.
4. Developing alternative instructional activities
Fourth, the structural lens might inform a range of instructional activities beyond traditional case analysis. Games, debates, roleplays, team problem solving, and so forth—all of these are examples of activities that tend to characterize more effective ethics education courses because they facilitate both cognitive and social engagement (Mulhearn et al., Reference Mulhearn, Watts, Torrence, Todd, Turner, Connelly and Mumford2017b; Todd et al., Reference Todd, Torrence, Mulhearn, Watts, Connelly and Mumford2017). We can envision how the content of such activities might be informed by the structural lens. For example, it would be fairly straightforward to design a game (e.g., “Guess that Dilemma Type”) using the “dilemma deck” developed by SIOP’s Committee for the Advancement of Professional Ethics (CAPE). In fact, this dilemma deck was recently developed with the structural forms of ethical dilemmas in mind, so it stands as one example of an ethics education resource that has already been informed by the structural lens.Footnote 3
5. Identifying alternative evaluation criteria
Fifth, the structural lens may inform the selection of criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of ethics education. Many ethics education efforts go without any kind of formal evaluation (Mumford et al., Reference Mumford, Steele and Watts2015). Among instructors who do evaluate the effectiveness of their courses or programs, student reactions are the primary criterion used (Steele et al., Reference Steele, Mulhearn, Medeiros, Watts, Connelly and Mumford2016). Despite the bad rap associated with reactions as legitimate evaluation criteria, student reactions in ethics courses (e.g., content relevance, satisfaction) have been shown to be positively correlated with objective learning outcomes such as gains in knowledge or decision-making skills (Turner et al., Reference Turner, Watts, Steele, Mulhearn, Torrence, Todd, Mumford and Connelly2018). Thus, instructors might include questions about any new structural forms content when assessing student reactions (e.g., How useful was the structural lens of ethical dilemmas in aiding your analysis of ethical dilemmas?).
Of course, robust ethics education efforts go beyond reaction criteria to judge course effectiveness. An alternative criterion may include a multiple-choice situational judgment test that asks students to correctly identify the form of ethical dilemmas as a measure of ethical dilemma awareness/recognition. The content of such a measure would require relatively little effort to develop given the public availability of ethical incidents made public by Lefkowitz (Reference Lefkowitz2021).
Conclusion
In providing a new lens for understanding the structural forms of ethical dilemmas, Lefkowitz (Reference Lefkowitz2021) raised ideas with important implications for professional ethics education. We briefly examined five tasks carried out by ethics instructors that might benefit from incorporating this new structural lens. However, two limitations should be noted. First, given the lack of empirical research on this topic, our perspective is largely speculative regarding the ways in which Lefkowitz’s structural lens might inform, and hopefully improve, ethics education. Thus, our comments should be viewed as ideas, not recommendations. Second, it is important to recognize that not every ethical situation faced in a professional’s career constitutes a dilemma. In fact, most probably do not (Lefkowitz, Reference Lefkowitz2017). This suggests that ethics instructors ought to always keep in mind the importance of not only preparing students to face ethical dilemmas such as those embodied in the complex forms put forth by Lefkowitz but also preparing them for the black-and-white situations where ethical choices are straightforward.
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Lefkowitz’s (Reference Lefkowitz2021) identification of a structural level of ethical dilemmas provides a novel lens for understanding the variety of forms that ethical dilemmas might take. This lens has noteworthy implications for ethics education—implications that went largely unexamined in the focal article. Thus, our commentary sheds light on the applicability of the structural lens discussed in the focal article to the practice of professional ethics education.
Ethics education
Ethics education refers to the formal curricula, courses, and programs designed to convey the values and norms of a profession (Mulhearn et al., Reference Mulhearn, Steele, Watts, Medeiros, Connelly and Mumford2017a). Ethics education serves a critical role in preparing industrial-organizational (I-O) psychologists to navigate ethical issues and dilemmas encountered in their careers. For example, ethical behavior was identified by surveys of members of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) as one of the top five competencies (Zelin et al., Reference Zelin, Lider and Doverspike2015). Additionally, ethics (i.e., “Ethical, Legal, Diversity, and International Issues”) is listed as one of six foundational competencies in the Guidelines for Education and Training in I-O Psychology (SIOP, 2016).
Next, we discuss five key instructional tasks involved in the planning and delivery of ethics education efforts that might be informed by the structural lens proposed by Lefkowitz. We refer to these as instructional tasks because they are typically carried out by course instructors in graduate education and professional education programs.
Applying the structural lens to five instructional tasks
1. Establishing learning objectives
First, it is widely accepted that specifying learning objectives, or instructional goals, is a key activity involved in planning and developing any effective training or educational program (Goldstein & Ford, Reference Goldstein and Ford2002). Examples of traditional learning objectives associated with ethics education content include increasing knowledge of moral philosophy and ethical issues, as well as building cognitive skills that facilitate ethical decision making (Watts et al., Reference Watts, Medeiros, Mulhearn, Steele, Connelly and Mumford2017). However, based on Lefkowitz’s structural lens, we might suggest additional learning objectives that could prove beneficial to students, such as increasing recognition of the nature of ethical dilemmas, as well as adapting decision-making strategies to various forms of dilemmas to generate more effective and ethical solutions. Of course, this latter objective requires further research to identify whether particular strategies are more or less effective for addressing particular forms of ethical dilemmas.
2. Selecting case content
Second, the structural lens may also inform how instructors go about selecting ethics cases. Meta-analytic evidence demonstrates that cases are one of the most popular and effective methods for delivering ethics education (Medeiros et al., Reference Medeiros, Watts, Mulhearn, Steele, Connelly and Mumford2017; Watts et al., Reference Watts, Medeiros, Mulhearn, Steele, Connelly and Mumford2017). Cases are narrative accounts of ethical dilemmas designed to expose students to a range of ethical issues relevant to a profession (e.g., Lowman, Reference Lowman2006). Cases benefit students by helping them develop experiential knowledge pertaining to various kinds of ethical issues and situations emerging in the field (Mumford et al., Reference Mumford, Connelly, Brown, Murphy, Hill, Antes, Waples and Devenport2008).
Case resource libraries are typically organized around specific ethical issues relevant to research and practice (e.g., confidentiality, conflicts of interest, sexual harassment).Footnote 1 In other words, attention is paid to the overt or manifest level of ethical issues but not the structural level of ethical dilemmas. This is problematic for two reasons. First, it is possible for students to be exposed to a variety of ethical issues without being exposed to the full range of forms of ethical dilemmas—leaving critical gaps in experiential knowledge. Second, compared with manifest ethical issues that can change over time, the structural level of ethical dilemmas is likely to be temporally stable.Footnote 2 In sum, multiple levels of case content will be important to consider when selecting cases in order to ensure students are exposed to a balanced and diverse range of specific ethical issues as well as the higher level structural forms of ethical dilemmas.
3. Structuring the analysis of cases
Third, the structural lens provides a new means for students to analyze case content. Analysis of case content typically occurs by asking students to respond to a series of open-ended questions designed to encourage active processing of structural elements occurring within the case (Mumford et al., Reference Mumford, Connelly, Brown, Murphy, Hill, Antes, Waples and Devenport2008; e.g., What is the problem in this scenario? What are the main strategies or steps that you might take to address this problem? Why did you choose to take these particular steps?). In addition to such important questions, instructors can ask students to identify the particular form or forms of ethical dilemmas present in the case as well as consider how the nature of the dilemma might influence their approach.
4. Developing alternative instructional activities
Fourth, the structural lens might inform a range of instructional activities beyond traditional case analysis. Games, debates, roleplays, team problem solving, and so forth—all of these are examples of activities that tend to characterize more effective ethics education courses because they facilitate both cognitive and social engagement (Mulhearn et al., Reference Mulhearn, Watts, Torrence, Todd, Turner, Connelly and Mumford2017b; Todd et al., Reference Todd, Torrence, Mulhearn, Watts, Connelly and Mumford2017). We can envision how the content of such activities might be informed by the structural lens. For example, it would be fairly straightforward to design a game (e.g., “Guess that Dilemma Type”) using the “dilemma deck” developed by SIOP’s Committee for the Advancement of Professional Ethics (CAPE). In fact, this dilemma deck was recently developed with the structural forms of ethical dilemmas in mind, so it stands as one example of an ethics education resource that has already been informed by the structural lens.Footnote 3
5. Identifying alternative evaluation criteria
Fifth, the structural lens may inform the selection of criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of ethics education. Many ethics education efforts go without any kind of formal evaluation (Mumford et al., Reference Mumford, Steele and Watts2015). Among instructors who do evaluate the effectiveness of their courses or programs, student reactions are the primary criterion used (Steele et al., Reference Steele, Mulhearn, Medeiros, Watts, Connelly and Mumford2016). Despite the bad rap associated with reactions as legitimate evaluation criteria, student reactions in ethics courses (e.g., content relevance, satisfaction) have been shown to be positively correlated with objective learning outcomes such as gains in knowledge or decision-making skills (Turner et al., Reference Turner, Watts, Steele, Mulhearn, Torrence, Todd, Mumford and Connelly2018). Thus, instructors might include questions about any new structural forms content when assessing student reactions (e.g., How useful was the structural lens of ethical dilemmas in aiding your analysis of ethical dilemmas?).
Of course, robust ethics education efforts go beyond reaction criteria to judge course effectiveness. An alternative criterion may include a multiple-choice situational judgment test that asks students to correctly identify the form of ethical dilemmas as a measure of ethical dilemma awareness/recognition. The content of such a measure would require relatively little effort to develop given the public availability of ethical incidents made public by Lefkowitz (Reference Lefkowitz2021).
Conclusion
In providing a new lens for understanding the structural forms of ethical dilemmas, Lefkowitz (Reference Lefkowitz2021) raised ideas with important implications for professional ethics education. We briefly examined five tasks carried out by ethics instructors that might benefit from incorporating this new structural lens. However, two limitations should be noted. First, given the lack of empirical research on this topic, our perspective is largely speculative regarding the ways in which Lefkowitz’s structural lens might inform, and hopefully improve, ethics education. Thus, our comments should be viewed as ideas, not recommendations. Second, it is important to recognize that not every ethical situation faced in a professional’s career constitutes a dilemma. In fact, most probably do not (Lefkowitz, Reference Lefkowitz2017). This suggests that ethics instructors ought to always keep in mind the importance of not only preparing students to face ethical dilemmas such as those embodied in the complex forms put forth by Lefkowitz but also preparing them for the black-and-white situations where ethical choices are straightforward.