Comm Ethics Introduction (12!8!06)
Transcript of Comm Ethics Introduction (12!8!06)
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whom may not see writing and speaking as primary job functions. Consequently, they
may underestimate the importance of writing and speaking and fail to see the ethical
stakes.
Although both professional communicators and professionals who communicate
many make ethical decisions, many tend to exercise ethical judgment intuitively (Faber,
1999). In doing so, people unconsciously reify a system of values and beliefs. Although
communication is always value-laden, some critical distance is required for
communicators to see how the values and beliefs implicit in a text potentially conflict
with those belonging to their readers (Kienzler, 2001). When they do so, communicators
are more likely to recognize ethical issues and other areas of particular ethical concern,
including:
Uses and misuses of visual information
Culturally-biased communication
Plagiarism
Audience vs. Employer Advocacy
Cognitive burden of communicative choices
The above issues are important points of consideration for professional
communicators, especially with regard to how they ply their trade. Numerous published
accounts (Allen, 1995; Bryan, 1996; Dombrowski, 1999; Dragga 1996; Sims, 1993;
Webber, 1995) address these issues. Most of these sources and others like them carefully
situate their recommendations for best practices in a more comprehensive discussion of
the rhetorical activities involved in responding to a communicative situation. Rhetorical
activity is the focus of this module as well. The scenarios in this module encourage
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readers to consider the work that reports, memos, emails, conversations, and
presentations do. Readers should consider the impressions that texts create and how texts
help encourage relationships between communicators, organizations, and their audiences.
The subject of this module is ethics in business communication. The audience,
however, includes any student of professional communication or any student in a
business-related field where writing and speaking form part of a core set of skills that one
must exercise in the workplace.
Ethical Conflicts in Context
Central to the discussion of ethics in this module is a communicators sometimes-
conflicted relationship with an audience and with the people on whose behalf they are
communicating. Communicators must negotiate between two different roles (Faber,
2002): as members of a profession and as advocates for their audiences. This dual
position can, but does not necessarily, result in a conflict of interest that clouds other
ethical decisions one may need to make.
On one hand, a professional communicator works for the maintenance and betterment
of a given profession. The communicator supports a professions interests by producing
documents to reify that professions provenance over a particular body of knowledge or
set of skilled practices. Communicators in all manner of professional settings become
skilled at producing texts that their colleagues use to exercise their professional duties
(e.g., study protocols, contracts, design forms, and proposals). In other words,
communicators have a vested interest in promoting the interests of their employers. On
the other hand, a communicator is also an advocate for the audience, one who makes
information usable to those who need it. Fulfilling this role, the communicator is
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responsible for making information accessible and usable for the purposes that the
audience brings to it.
In some cases, the motives of professionals and audiences do not match, and
herein is seed of many potential ethical conflicts. As communicators make information
more accessible and directly usable by their audiences, they change the nature and
necessity of the relationship between the audience and the professional(s) whose interests
are ideally served by those texts. To preserve a professionals role, communicators must
selectively overlook their responsibilities to audiences. How should communicators
serve both constituencies when different values are at stake? Situations like these present
clear ethical conflicts without obvious solutions. They are the subject of this module, and
thinking through these problems will encourage readers to understand how to apply the
best practices of professional communication.
A Code of Ethical Business Communication
To this point, we have portrayed communication ethics as complex, uncertain,
context-dependent, and frequently driven by conflicting motivations. This is not to say
that communication ethics cannot be guided by philosophical notions of ethical conduct.
A number of authors have suggested that it can, by subscribing to philosophies that
propose universal (see Markel 1993; 1997) situated (Markel 1997) or cross-cultural
(Dragga, 1999) approaches to applying ethical standards. In the abstract, however, these
guidelines stand apart from the contexts in which communicators actually make and bear
the consequences of their decisions. Considering that communicators serve professions,
readers may find it useful to examine the code of ethics supported by the International
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Association for Business Communication (http://www.iabc.com/about/code.htm), which
offers a more detailed set of guidelines. From the website:
1. Professional communicators uphold the credibility and dignity of their profession
by practicing honest, candid and timely communication and by fostering the free
flow of essential information in accord with the public interest.
2. Professional communicators disseminate accurate information and promptly
correct any erroneous communication for which they may be responsible.
3. Professional communicators understand and support the principles of free speech,
freedom of assembly, and access to an open marketplace of ideas; and, act
accordingly.
4. Professional communicators are sensitive to cultural values and beliefs and
engage in fair and balanced communication activities that foster and encourage
mutual understanding.
5. Professional communicators refrain from taking part in any undertaking which the
communicator considers to be unethical.
6. Professional communicators obey laws and public policies governing their
professional activities and are sensitive to the spirit of all laws and regulations
and, should any law or public policy be violated, for whatever reason, act
promptly to correct the situation.
7. Professional communicators give credit for unique expressions borrowed from
others and identify the sources and purposes of all information disseminated to the
public.
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8. Professional communicators protect confidential information and, at the same
time, comply with all legal requirements for the disclosure of information
affecting the welfare of others.
9. Professional communicators do not use confidential information gained as a result
of professional activities for personal benefit and do not represent conflicting or
competing interests without written consent of those involved.
10. Professional communicators do not accept undisclosed gifts or payments for
professional services from anyone other than a client or employer
11. Professional communicators do not guarantee results that are beyond the power of
the practitioner to deliver
12. Professional communicators are honest not only with others but also, and most
importantly, with themselves as individuals; for a professional communicator
seeks the truth and speaks that truth first to the self. (IABC, 2006, Articles)
While the IABC may provide a code of ethics that is most topically suited to the
scenarios in this module, others publish applicable codes as well. For example:
Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW):
http://english.ttu.edu/attwtest/ATTWcode.asp
Society for Technical Communication (STC): http://216.35.212.183/code.html
American Medical Writers Association (AMWA):
http://www.amwa.org/about/ethics/html
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM):
http://www.acm.org/constitution/code.html
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Many of the codes from the IABC specify how a communicator should act in the
abstract. They exhort the communicator not to use information without appropriate
attribution, to provide accurate information, to promote the free flow of information, and
to maintain the confidentiality of information to which they have been entrusted. The
guidelines also recommend that communicators attempt to understand and accommodate
their various audiences, to provide information that is timely, to respect the welfare of
others, and to understand their legal obligations. While these codes do specify
communication practices, they are equally useful as heuristics for assessing a situation
and determining what could be an ethical course of action. For this reason, readers will
find the guidelines helpful when considering the scenarios included in this module.
In this module, we do not present cases where there are obvious and egregious
breaches of ethical conduct. Although many textbooks that cover communication ethics
present such situations, those presented here attempt to complicate ethical decisions by
sketching a more detailed picture of the motivations and interests that are in conflict.
Readers are encouraged to consider the complexities of making an ethical
decision. Each scenario poses a problem regarding how a communicator should handle
an exchange of information. We have attempted to provide enough information about the
writer, the form of communication, the organization, and the audience to add a degree of
realism. Against each context of complicated motives, readers can consider which
actions would be the most ethical. In other words, these scenarios attempt to highlight
ethical dilemmas, where no decision is obvious and no decision is free of consequences.
Even when all factors are weighed, the ethical decision may not always be the easiest one
to make.
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We expect these decisions to be difficult to make, and we expect to uncover
disagreements, which may reveal how closely readers identify with different parties in the
scenario. To encourage consideration and discussion of alternatives, we have included
answers from others who have considered the scenarios. Immediately following each
scenario is a summary of responses from 29 students enrolled in MBA or Executive MBA
programs. Where available, we have included their written comments. Following these
comments is an extended discussion/interview with Professor Paul F. Williams, a
business ethicist at NC State University. In these interviews, Professor Williams
discusses the nature of the ethical dilemma in each scenario and then offers a course of
action.
Concluding each scenario is a list of discussion questions that ask readers to
consider both why they choose the response that they did and how they might craft a text
to carry out their decisions. Overall, the discussion is intended to move readers from a
consideration of what constitutes an ethical response in the abstract to considering how to
act on that decision in the form of a piece of written or spoken communication.
Scenario 1
1. Topics to lead into Scenario #1 (Kelly and her decision to include default loans
during a particularly bad year)
a. What is the Professional Communicators Role: as Reader Advocate
(State) or Professions Advocate (NPO)
b. Kelly as the readers advocate
c. Kelly as a member of and advocate of a profession/organization
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2. Topics that lead into Scenario #2 (reveal Angel funding to VCs before the
funding has been fully secured).
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References
Allen, N. (1996). Ethics and visual rhetorics: Seeings not believing anymore. TechnicalCommunication Quarterly, 5(1): 87-105.
Bryan, J. (1995). Seven types of distortion: A taxonomy of manipulative techniques usedin charts and graphs. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 25(2): 127-179.
Devitt, A.J. (1991). Intertextuality in tax accounting: Generic, referential, and functional.In C. Bazerman and J. Paradis (Eds.) Textual Dynamics of the Professions: Historical
and Contemporary Studies of Writing in Professional Communities (pp. 336-357).
Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Dombrowski, P.M. (1999). Ethics in technical communication. New York: Longman.
Dragga, S. (1996). Is this ethical?: A survey of opinion on principles and practices ofdocument design. Technical Communication, 43 (3), 255-265.
Dragga, S. (1999). Ethical intercultural communication. Technical CommunicationQuarterly, 8(4): 365-382.
Faber, B. (1999). Intuitive ethics: Understanding and critiquing the role of intuition inethical decisions. Technical Communication Quarterly, 8 (2), 189-202.
Faber, B. (2002). Professional identities: What is professional about professional
communication? Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 16(3), 306-337.
Kienzler, D. (2001). Ethics, critical thinking, and professional communication pedagogy.Technical Communication Quarterly, 10(3): 319-339.
Markel, M. (1993). An ethical imperative for technical communication. IEEE
Transactions on Professional Communication 36(2): 81-86.
Markel, M. (1997). Ethics and technical communication: A case for foundational
approaches. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication40(4): 284-289.
Sims, B. (1993). Linking ethics and language in the technical communication classroom.
Technical Communication Quarterly, 2(3): 285-299.
Webber, J. H. (1995). Ethics in scientific and technical communication [Electronicversion]. WISENET Journal, 38:2-4. http://www.jeanweber.com/about/ethics.htm
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