by Chris MacDonald*
Here’s what journalists need to know about interviewing experts in the field of business ethics and corporate social responsibility:
1. Almost every story about business has an ethics angle. Ethics is about how people should constrain their behaviour in pursuit of
by Chris MacDonald*
Here’s what journalists need to know about interviewing experts in the field of business ethics and corporate social responsibility:
1. Almost every story about business has an ethics angle. Ethics is about how people should constrain their behaviour in pursuit of self-interest, and about how businesses should constrain their actions in pursuit of profit. Most typically, ethics requires that we avoid doing harm, and avoid violating people’s rights. The vast majority of business decisions have implications either for people’s well-being or for their rights. So just about every business decision has an ethical component. For example, a product design and labelling decisions can have environmental implications, which are always a matter of ethics. (You can see my definition of ethics here: ethics definition.)
2. An ethics expert (e.g., a professor who teaches ethics) will tend to know a lot about the arguments for and against, but will typically not have an opinion on various factual matters (e.g., “Is this sort of thing common?” and “How many companies have done this?” and “Will this continue in the future?”). However, within their own narrow field of teaching and research expertise, they will be more well-informed than the usual person (e.g., a prof who teaches ethics in finance will tend to know about financial institutions, key issues, etc.)
3. An ethics expert (e.g., a professor who teaches ethics) will typically resist giving you a straight “yes or no” answer to a question like, “Is this unethical?” They are very likely, however, to be helpful in pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of various points of view (whether they are, e.g., factually misinformed or based on faulty logic). They may tell you that on a particular issue there are several respectable (but possibly contradictory) answers, but also several unreasonable answers.
4. Most ethics experts will be better at helping you see what the key questions are than they are at giving answers to those questions.
5. Ethics and the law are not the same thing. Some things are legal but unethical. Some illegal things are ethically justifiable in certain circumstances. Ethics experts are not automatically legal experts, though they may tend to be familiar with basic legal issues that intersect with their own areas of teaching and research.
6. Ethics is a true area of expertise, but expertise in the area is contentious. Look for credentials. Having a PhD focusing on ethics is good. Teaching the topic at a respected university is also good. Some people’s jobs — for example, being in charge of training your company’s employees on its Code of Ethics — give them experience and expertise in particular bits of ethics, but not necessarily broader competency.
7. Being an expert in ethics is not the same as being a moral authority. Ethics profess