essay about ethical communication

Importance of Ethics in Communication Essay

Introduction, what is communication ethics, how can one observe ethics in communication, unethical communication, importance of ethics in communication.

In any organization, the workplace needs to be run in such a way that every person feels part of the organization. On many occasions, decisions are made by the leaders and supervisors, leaving the subordinates as mere observers. Self-initiative is crucial in solving some of the problems that arise and as such, every employee is expected to possess self initiative.

Communication ethics is an integral part of the decision making process in an organization. Employees need to be trained on the importance of ethics in decision making so as to get rid of the blame game factor when wrong choices are made. The working place has changed and the employees have become more independent in the decision making process.

The issue that arises is whether employees make the right decision that would benefit the company or they make the wrong choices that call for the downfall of the company. Some organizations have called for the establishment of an ethics program that can aid and empower employees so that unethical actions would be intolerable. This is because occasionally, bad decisions destroy organizations making the whole decision making process unethical.

Some programs on good ethics can help in guiding the employees in the process of decision making. This would ensure the smooth running of organizations and instances of unethical decision making would be null. An ethical decision making process is important in ensuring that the decisions made by the employees are beneficial to organization welfare and operations.

Ethical communication is prudent in both the society and the organizations. The society can remain functional if every person acted in a way that defines and satisfies who they are. However, this could be short lived because of the high probability of making unethical decisions and consequently, a chaotic society. For this reason, it would be of essence to make ethical rules based on a set guidelines and principles.

Ethical communications is defined by ethical behavioral principles that include honesty, concern on counterparts, fairness, and integrity. This cannot be achieved if everyone acted in isolation. The action would not be of any good to most people. Adler and Elmhorst (12) note that actions should be based on the professional ethics where other professionals have to agree that the actions in question are ethical and standard. If a behavior is standard there is nothing to fear if exposed to the media.

However, unethical behavior can taint the reputation of an organization. An action needs to do good to most people in the long run. Adler and Elmhorst (12) note that this golden rule needs to be applicable in organizations. Failure to do this, it becomes an obstacle to this principle.

In achieving the ideals, several obstacles are bound to arise in the process of decision making. Rationalizations often distract individuals involved in making tough decisions. According to the Josephson Institute of ethics (2002) the false assumption that people hold on to that necessity leads to propriety can be judgmental that unethical tasks are part of the moral imperative.

For example, assuming that a particular action is necessary and it lies in the ethical domain is a mere assumption that can be suicidal to an organization. This necessity assumption often leads to a false necessity trap that prompts individuals to take actions without putting into account the cost of doing or failing to do the right thing (Josephson Institute of ethics, Para 5). As part of a routine job, it is likely to be an obstacle in the sense that an individual is doing what he/she got to do.

For example, morality of professional behavior is often neglected at the workplace and on most occasions, people do what they feel is justifiable although it is morally wrong even if not in that context. Individuals often assume that if everyone is doing a certain action, then it is ethical. However, this is not the right way to go as the accountability of individuals and their behaviors should not be treated as a norm in the organization. For example, we could assume that everyone tells lies in an organization.

This assumption is uncertain because lying is unethical and can hinder the achievement of certain goals in an organizational. It may not bring harm at the given time but in the long run it may be chaotic. An observation by the Josephson Institute of Ethics (para 9) is that false rationalization is just an excuse to commit unethical conduct. Basically, the assumption that an action would not harm somebody or the organization does not give the limelight to committing unethical deeds.

The management of an organization should make the ethics of their employees their concern and business. The assumption that employees can make ethical decisions without advising them on what is ethical and then blaming the employees in case the plan backfires is unethical. In ensuring that the actions carried by employees are ethical, the human resource management should set up ethical programs within the organization.

As noted by Flynn (30) the principles of ethical behavior are bound to develop if an organization itself practices acts of ethics. For example, honesty, fairness, concern for others, morality and truthfulness can be achieved if code of ethical conduct is practiced in organization. In achieving an ethical decision some steps need to be followed. Decisions making should be ethical and objective to the organization and its components.

According to Flynn (37) the rules of the Texas instrument company noted that the legality of an action is of imperative importance. If for example an action is illegal then the law should not be broken because an action has to be taken. Instead, the executioner of the action needs to stop right away. Actions need to comply with the values of an organization. If the actions cannot comply with the set organizational values then the action may not fit well.

An action carried should not make someone feel bad or the actions carried should not be harmful to the executioner. The public image of an action in the newspaper or media should be considerate. An action should be within a given timeframe and be done even if its appearance will affect it. For an action that one is not sure, they are obligated to ask and if not satisfied they continue asking until an answer is got (Flynn 37).

Communication ethics is important in the operation of an organization. The way in which decision making is carried in an organization determines the outcome. Ethical decision making process is necessary in an organization. Some of the obstacles that restrict rationalization are merely based on assumptions. They lead to downfall or negative ramifications that affect the organizations. Organizational managers are advised to take decision making of employees as their own concern.

Legitimacy of actions is important and so are the values, because some actions maybe illegal or values fail to meet the organizational values. This may have negative impact if they are not illegal or in line with organizational goals. In general, ethical decision making process is important as it saves a company from the problems it would face for its unethical actions

Works Cited

Adler, Ronald B. and Jeanne Marquardt Elmhorst. Communicating at Work . 9 th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2008. Print.

Flynn, Gillian. “Make Employee Ethics Your Business.” Personnel Journal ( 1995) 74.6: 30-37. Web.

Josephson Institute of Ethics. “Making Ethical Decisions—Part Five: Obstacles to Ethical Decision Making.” Accounting Web (2002 ). Web.

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Communication ethics.

Lisbeth A. Lipari Lisbeth A. Lipari Department of Communication, Denison University
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.58
Published online: 27 February 2017

Communication ethics concerns the creation and evaluation of goodness in all aspects and manifestations of communicative interaction. Because both communication and ethics are tacitly or explicitly inherent in all human interactions, everyday life is fraught with intentional and unintentional ethical questions—from reaching for a cup of coffee to speaking critically in a public meeting. Thus ethical questions infuse all areas of the discipline, including rhetoric, media studies, intercultural/international communication, relational and organization communication, as well as other iterations of the field.

moral reasoning
normativity
communication and critical studies

Introduction

Broadly conceived, ethics concerns the creation and evaluation of goodness, or “the good,” by responding to the general question: How shall we live ? What makes any given decision good or right or wrong? Is it ethically good for governments to persuade poor people to fight, and perhaps die, in wars that disproportionately benefit the wealthy? Is it an ethical good for society to provide access to free and quality education to all children? Are politicians obligated to tell the truth to their constituents regardless of the consequence? By wrestling with the ancient human question of what is good , ethicists disclose the inherently social and political nature of communicative phenomenon—whether they are linked to laws, morals, values, and customs and whether they vary from region to region or culture to culture. The word ethics itself comes from the Greek word ethikos , which means habit or custom, whereas the word moral comes from the Latin translation of the Greek word ethikos . Ethics govern and yet are distinct from law. That is, while laws encode values and customs that will be enforced by the power of the state, more generally ethics concern those values and beliefs (whether enforced by law or not) that a society or group or individual believe will most likely create goodness. But as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others have famously said, one has a moral obligation to disobey unjust laws. And the questions of what makes a law or action just or unjust, who gets to deliberate, and how we decide are some of the central questions of communication ethics.

In the field of communication ethics , scholars draw upon a variety of ethical theories to address questions pertaining to goodness involving all manifestations of communicative interaction. And because both communication and ethics are tacitly or explicitly inherent in all human interactions, everyday life is fraught with intentional and unintentional ethical questions—from reaching for a cup of coffee to speaking up in a public meeting. Thus, ethical questions infuse all areas of the discipline of communication, including rhetoric, media studies, intercultural/international communication, relational and organization communication, and all other iterations of the discipline. Some scholars specialize in communication ethics as a subfield of communication studies with applications to all aspects of the field, while others work more theoretically in search of philosophical inquiry and understanding. After a brief introduction to the history of the field, this article sketches three central characteristics that shape contours of communication ethics scholarship—heterogeneity, interconnectivity, and historicity—and then goes on to follow three central concerns of communication ethics scholarship—integrity, power, and alterity. A brief overview of five modes of ethical reasoning will close the article.

Brief History of the Discipline

Some scholars trace the origins of communication ethics to American public education in the early 1900s, when questions about “speech hygiene” drove researchers to examine the role of education in fostering qualities of moral character and “mental health” in students (Arnett, 1987 ; Gehrke, 2009 ). Scholarship in subsequent decades came to emphasize speech education as a means to prepare citizens for participation, as both speakers and listeners, in democracy, and particularly as a way to resist fascist oratory. Developed at a time when access to education and the democratic process was shifting from elites to the masses, these scholars focused on speech education as a means to develop moral excellence in psychological, cognitive, and communicative terms they traced to the classical canon of rhetoric, such as the great Roman teacher/scholar Quintilian’s definition of rhetoric as “the good man speaking well” (Quintilian, 2006 ). Postwar decades in the United States brought increasing attention to questions of communication ethics involving demagoguery, persuasion, propaganda, and human rights (Lomas, 1961 ; Nilsen, 1960 ; Parker, 1972 ). Central to these studies were concern for accuracy and truthfulness such that “in each persuasive situation there is an ethical obligation to provide listeners with such information as it is possible to provide in the time available and with the medium used” (Nilsen, 1960 , p. 201).

In the 1980s and 1990s, communication scholars affiliated with what was then the Speech Communication Association (now the National Communication Association) inaugurated the first communication ethics commission and, subsequently, the first national conference on ethics (Arnett, Bell, & Fritz, 2010 ). These early scholars, such as Ken Anderson, James A. Jaksa, Richard Johannesen, Clifford Christians, and Ron Arnett, seeded what was to become a fertile field of scholarship connecting all areas of the discipline in ways that bridged philosophical and applied approaches. Also in the latter half of the 20th century , scholars in communication ethics began to wrestle with the problematics of power and truth in order to interrogate ethical questions regarding the relationship between social standpoint and social justice. Influenced by continental theorists such as Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francoise Lyotard, and Michel Foucault, communication ethics were sometimes characterized by the struggle between objectivist, absolutist questions of truth versus subjective, relativist conceptions of truth. Scholars critical of objectivist perspectives drew upon insights from critical, critical race, feminist, postcolonial and postmodernist theories that challenged prevailing orthodoxies about the nature of identity, the status of the subject, and the role of power in constructing models of “the good.” Scholars such as Molefi Asante, Larry Gross, and Janice Hocker Rushing undertook examinations of the relationship of ethics to racism, sexuality, and sexism (Asante, 1992 ; Gross, 1991 ; Rushing, 1993 ).

Influenced in part by Alasdair MacIntyre’s neo-Aristotlean work, “After Virtue,” as well as Jürgen Habermas’s discourse ethics, public sphere theory, and theory of communicative action, scholars in the last part of the 20th and first part of the 21st century became increasingly interested in ethical questions pertaining to truth conditions in political discourse, such as journalism, political rhetoric, and discourse in the public sphere (Baynes, 1994 ; Ettema & Glasser, 1988 ). At roughly the same time, an increasing number of communication scholars began to draw on the existentialist and hermeneutic continental scholarship of philosophers such as Martin Buber, Martin Heidegger, and Emmanuel Levinas to explore questions of alterity and otherness as it pertained to relational, rhetorical, and mediated communication (Hyde, 2001 ; Pinchevski, 2005 ).

Over the last 100 years, communication ethics has engaged questions about how to create ethical worlds with our communication processes, be they individual, face-to-face, mediated, or institutional. The area of corporate ethics, for example, concerns not “green-leafing” public relations, but institutional practices that create goodness—such as transparency, accountability, and profit-sharing—not just for owners or shareholders, but for all stakeholders including workers, the earth, the animals, and so forth (Groom & Fritz, 2012 ). Some ethicists, such as Zygmunt Bauman, would likely argue that the concept of corporate ethics is itself oxymoronic: “No moral impulse can survive, let alone emerge unscathed from, the acid test of usefulness or profit. All immorality begins with demanding such a test” (Bauman, 1993 ). In short, communication ethics concerns the discernment of the good, seeking to balance the competing values, needs, and wants of multiple constituencies inhabiting pluralistic democracies.

General Characteristics: Heterogeneity, Interconnectivity, and Historicity

At this point in time, communication ethics scholarship can be described by three central characteristics: heterogeneity, interconnectivity, and historicity. Communication ethics is marked by heterogeneity through the sheer multiplicity of ethical concerns, disciplinary contexts, theoretical perspectives, and modes of reasoning it can pursue. A question about deception, for example, could be examined in any number of communication contexts (e.g., social media, political campaigns, workplace organization, family relations), from any of a number of theoretical perspectives or concerns (e.g., ideological, dialogic, rhetorical, universalist), employing any number of modes of ethical reasoning (e.g., virtue, deontological, teleological, care) and any combination within and between these categories. Often ethical perspectives and values bump into one another, and the ethicist may employ multiple modes of thought to weigh the priorities of ethical value against another—questions about harassment for example, concerns the values of freedom of speech balanced against freedom from intimidation and harassment.

But heterogeneity should not be mistaken for relativism (Brummett, 1981 ). 1 Because ethical questions are embedded both tacitly and explicitly in all human interactions, communication scholars look at both covert as well as overt questions of ethics. Mission statements, for example, may set an overt frame for ethical values and ideals that a given organization aspires toward, but they may not facilitate the recognition of more hidden ethical questions that play out in daily operations. Similarly, ethical codes and credos that stipulate their norms and values are often written at the level of the individual and therefore obscure how institutions, organizations, and groups also function as (un)ethical agents. Codes and credos can also interfere with individual ethical agency and decision-making by removing from conscious awareness the need for vigilant attention to ethical issues that may be hidden. Other forms of overt ethics involve public argument, laws, policies, principals, guidelines, and so forth. In contrast, tacit ethics are implicit patterns of communicative interaction institutions that have ethical implications. That is, communication ethics looks not merely at individual agency and intersubjective processes but also at institutional norms, structural arrangements, and systematic patterns. In communication ethics, ethical questions are a question of not (only) individual agency but of shared implicit and explicit habits, norms, and patterns of communicative action. Communication ethics is therefore quite deliberate in examining both overt and covert contexts.

Heterogeneity also arises through the sheer number of values that may come into conflict in any given situation. In the case of hate speech, for example, the values of free speech bump up against the values of freedom from intimidation, harassment, and violation. Similarly, from the purview of communication ethics, context can mean nearly, if not fully, everything. The question of what makes a convincing ethical argument changes from setting to setting. In the context of a religious setting, for example, reasoning based on tradition and authority might take precedence over reasoning based on compassion and care. Within any given religious community, people wrestle with questions about how much they shall be governed by intelligence, compassion, and outcome and how much by faith. When intelligence tells us one thing and compassion another, which should we trust? Similarly, tensions between local and state or federal control can also shape what values or modes of reasoning take precedence. The communication ethicist must face this nearly endlessly multiplicitous diversity in her inquiry into questions of the good.

Because communication ethics is an immanent subfield that, like the myriad processes of communication itself, is inextricable from the deeply interconnected manifestations of all human interaction, our communicative interactions are inevitably intertwined. Interdependency manifests in the recognition that humans are socially embedded beings and therefore that no self exists completely independent of the social conditions (e.g., language, customs, narratives, hierarchies) from which that self emerged. But it is not simply the self that may or may not consciously choose a given action; communication ethicists also look at how actions choose persons. A worker in a health insurance industry is given an incentive to deny health claims knowing not only that if she does not do it someone else will, but that if she refuses she will be fired and her family will lose its insurance, upon which her disabled child depends. How much ethical agency and “freedom” can such a worker exert? Similarly, the financial managers of this company know that without such incentives, the company will lose money leading to layoffs of workers and possibly denial of even more claims. Thus, not only can there be a kind of independent ethical agency that stands apart from the set of relations it inhabits, there is little possibility of any ethical agent perceiving or anticipating all these ethical interconnections. I may serve my family a healthy dinner of quinoa not knowing that, as an indirect result, thousands of peasants high in the Andes can no longer afford to feed their families the very grain they grow.

Communication ethics is also deeply responsive to the historical events, conditions, and conventions that give rise to every communicative interaction. This can be seen in work on public memory, an area fraught with ethical questions—which historical events are commemorated or memorialized, and which are forgotten (Bruner, 2006 ; Vivian, 2010 )? What events rise to the level of national concern—that is, which events are remembered so as to reflect a shared national or cultural identity? Why is there a Holocaust museum but not a Native American genocide museum? Why have there been no reparations for centuries of American slavery? History relates to ethics via other questions of narrative, public and private. What stories are told, from whose point of view? When or how are these stories punctuated, and who speaks and who is ignored? When communication ethics examines concerns of power, it also explores how struggles over meaning and meaning making are always in dialogue with past and present discourses and regimes of power. How do the historical tensions between the differing goals of public education (i.e., serving to foster public goods such as democracy, liberty and citizenship vs. imposing social control through social stratification, compulsory subordination, and coerced conformity) continue to play out in today’s public debates about education policy, from questions of No Child Left Behind to the neoliberal moves to privatization? And what are the implications of education policy for class position, labor conditions, and increasing economic inequality? What has led public discourses about public goods to be subsumed so readily under neoliberal discourses emphasizing self-sufficiency and individual autonomy (Oh & Banjo, 2012 ; Saunders, 2010 )?

Integrity: Truth, Truthfulness, and Trust

Questions of truth and trust have long been at the center of communication ethics inquiry. As she noted in her classic treatise On Lying , Sissela Bok argues that few if any human groups, organizations, institutions, or states could succeed without the background assumptions of truthfulness (Bok, 1979 ). Distinguishing between truth and truthfulness, Bok puts the burden upon an individual’s active intention—intentionally misleading others differs, to Bok, from unknowingly uttering a falsehood. This distinction between conscious intention and unintentional distortion has been central to studies of journalism ethics, where questions of staged, falsified, and censored news are central (Wilcox, 1961 ; Wulfemeyer, 1985 ; Zelizer, 2007 ). Other questions involve the role of objectivity in news, its epistemic (im)possibility, and the ethical implications distinguishing between impartiality and objectivity (Carey, 1989 ; Malcolm, 2011 ; Ward, 2004 ). The role of the press as a watchdog of democracy has also been of central concern to journalist ethicists, principally through its imagined role as the fourth estate (or branch) of American government and the ethical implications of increasingly concentrated corporate ownership (Bagdikian, 2004 ; Huff & Roth, 2013 ; McChesney, 2014 ). A host of other issues, such as censorship, omission, bias, confidentiality, deception, libel, misrepresentation, slander, and witness, have long been central to ethical concerns in journalism. And some scholars, such as Stephen Ward ( 2005 ), have argued for a new philosophical basis for journalism ethics.

But issues of integrity are not just central to journalism—other modes of mediated communication also give rise to ethical questions about appropriation, colonization, and misrepresentation in addition to the kinds of human interactions these media call forth (D’Arcy, 2012 ; Munshi, Broadfoot, & Smith, 2011 ). Jaron Lanier ( 2010 ), for example, has written extensively about ethical questions related to social media, including what he calls “Hive Mind” that induces mob behavior, an overall lack of independence, groupthink, and depersonalization. Lanier also finds fault with social media’s alienation of information from experience and the drive for anonymity that induces violation, reductionism, insincerity, and a general lack of intellectual modesty. Similarly, in an examination of fearless speech, Foucault ( 2001 ) looks into a series of questions about the philosophical foundations of parrhesia: “Who is able to tell the truth? What are the moral, the ethical, and the spiritual conditions which entitle someone to present himself as a truth-teller? About what topics is it important to tell the truth? What are the consequences of telling the truth?”

Ethical questions about truth and truth telling also show up in rhetorical studies, especially those involving regarding history and politics (Johnstone, 1980 ; Newman, 1995 ). Whistleblowing is another communicative phenomenon where issues of integrity meet ethics. Ostensibly, “whistleblowing happens when ethical discourse becomes impossible, when acting ethically is tantamount to becoming a scapegoat” (Alford, 2001 , p. 36). Yet, according to Alford, the common narrative of the whistleblower as a martyr to truth who is seeking institutional redemption is not played out in the lived experiences of whistleblowers. In fact, the whistleblower is by definition only constituted by processes of institutional retaliation wherein the whistleblower is punished and the institution merely carries on. Even laws supposedly aimed to protect whistleblowers function merely at the level of procedure, which work in turn to reinforce institutional power leaving questions of morality as purely private, not public, affairs. “To act politically in this depoliticized public space is to be a scapegoat” (Alford, 2001 , p. 130). Other areas involving integrity in a wide variety of communication ethics contexts include questions of authenticity, betrayal, cynicism, demagoguery, denial, disclosure, distortion, erasure, exposure, falsification, mystification, obfuscation, omission, secrecy, selectivity, silence, surveillance, suspicion, and transparency (Herrscher, 2002 ; Ivie, 1980 ).

Power: Justice, Normativity, and Force

Power is another central thread in communication ethics scholarship that reveals the extent to which politics and ethics are deeply interconnected. Power is here understood to describe the capacity to impose, maintain, repair, and transform particular modes of social structuring that explicitly and implicitly condition our ideas about the good. When ethical values rise to the level of social/cultural importance, they become laws and not merely customs. But all laws and questions of justice are inherently ethical questions insofar as they inherently shape the contours of what any given community conceives of as the good. As Reinhold Niebuhr put it, “Politics will, to the end of history, be an area where conscience and power meet, where the ethical and the coercive factors of human life will interpenetrate and work out tentative and uneasy compromises” ( 2013 , p. 4). The relationships between ethics and power can be understood in terms of three dimensions—justice, normativity, and force.

Normativity is a form of power with wide-ranging ethical implications. Not only do social norms become a framework within which all forms of the good (and by extension, the bad) may be produced, they also invisibly become part of the interconnected embeddedness of the social that make subjectivity itself possible. Gender, for example, is a form of social normativity with far-ranging ethical implications. Not only do gender conventions govern nearly every conceivable variation of human interaction (from the professions to child raising), violations of gender norms are soundly punished, often violently. Similarly, because every binary includes a hierarchy, in the case of gender male standards are not only normative but unmarked as such even while they serve to set the standard of what is “good” in many situations. Thus evaluations of performance of many communicative actions such as oratory, argument, debate, writing, turn-taking, holding the floor, delivering instruction, and so forth, may appear to be gender neutral when in fact the very standards of quality and merit may be deeply embedded in normatively masculine gender conventions. Thus, because of its relation to ideology as a means of legitimating existing social relations and differences of power, status quo, and common sense, normativity can exert tremendous and often invisible power that inevitable engender ethical questions. Who dictates the terms of what is normative, correct, standard, common sense?

At the same time, however, normativity fuels the very machinery of everyday communicative action. Without predetermined conventions, such as those that govern traffic (street, commerce, or Internet), human interactions would be fraught with peril or even simply impossible. Similarly, what some consider to be the social contract—the implicit moral obligations we have by virtue of being part of society—make everyday life in the shared social world possible. But at the same time, norms and conventions by necessity make some things possible and others impossible. A good example of the role of normativity in ethical questions of power relates to the questions of national and world languages. Language plays a significant role in the production, maintenance, and change in relations of power. For example, although to many native English speakers the United States appears to be a monolinguistic society, the truth is quite the contrary. Some tens of millions of American speak more than 25 languages other than English (not including the more than 175 native American languages now spoken in the United States) with 17.5 million Spanish speakers (Schmid, 2001 ). The implications of exclusive usage and public acceptance of English-only policies and laws involve a constellation of ethical questions ranging from access to recognition (in terms of citizenship, voting, education, courts, medical care, etc.).

Similarly, there are enormous political and ethical implications of so-called world English wherein there are 1.5 billion English speakers in the world, where English is designated as an official language of 62 nations, and where English serves of the dominant language of science, academic publishing, and international organizations (Tsuda, 2008 ). From a global perspective, world English can serve as problem of linguistic hegemony, whereby English dominates as a form of linguistic imperialism with ethical consequences ranging from linguistic and communicative inequality, to discrimination, and colonization of the consciousness (Tsuda, 2008 ). Thus, issues of communicative competence are not ethically neutral but can in fact become political means of social stratification employing linguistic, discursive, and social norms. Because discourses are ways of displaying membership in particular social groups, communicative norms can also serve to include as well as exclude, to mark as insider or outsider, and as a means to regulate other forms of behavior. Other issues of normativity that touch on communication ethics therefore include belonging, civility, codes, community, common sense, conformity, consensus, identity, homogeneity, legitimation, locality, loyalty, mimesis, narrativity, political correctness, precepts, principals, propriety, prudence, ratification, representation, rules, standards, uniformity, unity, and universalism (Lozano-Reich & Cloud, 2009 ).

The area of justice provides yet another means by which power interrelates with communication ethics. Typically, justice revolves around questions of rights, fairness, due process, discrimination, equality, equity, impartiality, participation, privilege, recognition, sovereignty, and so forth. The American political philosopher John Rawls maintained that justice was equivalent to fairness, and he designed a thought experiment called the veil of ignorance as a means to determine principles of justice (as fairness) in a given community. Rawls’s veil was intended to conceal the social position of each participant in the deliberation of justice. In other words, people would deem principles of fairness without knowing where in society they would end up at the end of the day. In Rawls’s view, meritocracy cannot be just unless everyone begins at the same starting line with the same resources, experiences, endowments, etc. So what principles would those behind the veil choose? Rawls says we would choose equal basic liberties for everyone, with social and economic inequalities existing only if they worked to the advantage of the least well off members of society. To Rawls, the facts of inequitable distribution of economic or other success or failure are, to a large degree, outside of our control and thus neither just nor unjust . What is just and unjust is the way that public and political institutions deal with these facts. Some communication ethicists, however, have challenged these Rawlsian ideals of the capacity for neutral imagination (Couldry, Gray, & Gillespie, 2013 ; Munshi, Broadfoot, & Smith, 2011 ).

Explicit and overt questions of communication ethics often involve the values of justice. Ethical credos, honor codes, moral principles, and ethical guidelines often stipulate “right vs. wrong” scenarios as a means to get at the good. When questions of justice need to be arbitrated, deliberative methods that weigh first principles, outcomes, and precedent are often employed. But these themselves often beg the ethical question of who deliberates, under what conditions, and with what resources (Fraser, 1994 ; Habermas, 1989 ). A community dialogue meant to empower citizens largely disenfranchised from the halls of power must contend with questions of access, competence, and convention that underlie the very possibilities of deliberation. For example, when knowledge and communication skills leading to social power are made available to advantaged social groups but are withheld from less advantaged groups in society, a community “dialogue” can inadvertently become an instrument of injustice (Gastil, Lingle, & Deess, 2010 ; Jovanovic, 2012 ). Similarly, inequitable access to the resources of symbolic capital—the prestige, privilege, and education needed to constitute arguments—cannot be just if the allocation of those resources is unequal and available only to a few.

Questions of force are often directly related to justice in that they present manifestations of state and social power that can violently silence, repress, or simply rule “out of order” questions of justice. Force creates situations in which people are not able to speak for themselves, where those in power do not listen, and when the very language needed to articulate claims to justice is not understood. An example of the ethical dimensions of force can be seen in Scott’s ( 1990 ) idea of the “hidden transcript,” a form of hidden public discourse produced by and witnessed only by those without the power to set norms and the claims of justice. As Scott writes, even the most violent political oppression never completely silences the voices of the oppressed—the unspeakable is spoken clandestinely through discourse hidden from those in power: “Most of the political life of subordinate groups is to be found neither in overt collective defiance of power holders nor in complete hegemonic compliance, but in the vast territory between these two polar opposites” ( 1990 , p. 136). Similarly, Squires ( 2002 ) draws on this concept to examine how subordinated groups voice political resistance in disguise, hidden between the lines of the official or public transcript in a multiplicity of coded forms: “In the history of Black public spheres, the pressures of living in a racist society, the ongoing fight for equality, and the rich cultural reserves have necessitated” the use of hidden transcripts (Squires, 2002 , p. 457). Thus explicit force such as prohibitions of speaking and listening are met with implicit and explicit modes of force involving rumor, gossip, disguises, linguistic tricks, metaphors, euphemisms, folktales, and ritual gestures: “For good reason, nothing is entirely straightforward here; the realities of power for subordinate groups mean that much of their political action requires interpretation precisely because it is intended to be cryptic and opaque” (Scott, 1990 , p. 137).

Other forms of the power of force can be seen in the selective aggregation of “big data” by media and Internet conglomerates, or the everyday silencing, censorship, coercion, compulsion, confession, diagnosis, interrogation, negation, marginalization, repression, and prohibition that occur in workplaces, schools, governments, and other organizations where force overtly and covertly serves power (Fairfield & Shtein, 2014 ; Nunan & Di Domenico, 2013 ). But force also resists power in forms such as (re)appropriation, critique, extortion, framing, mobility, negation, networks, parrhesia, speaking truth to power, subversion, and even violence. For example, during the height of state violence in response to the American civil rights movement, a group of Quakers began pamphleteering, witnessing, and organizing in search for forceful responses to violence. In their 1955 pamphlet, “Speak truth to Power,” the Quakers wrote, “if ever truth reaches power, if ever it speaks to the individual citizen, it will not be the argument that convinces. Rather it will be his own inner sense of integrity that impels him to say, ‘Here I stand. Regardless of relevance or consequence, I can do no other’” (Rustin, 1955 , p. 68).

Relation: Alterity and Compassion

Another central thread of communication ethics is the idea of the relation as ontologically basic, meaning that no self can exist outside of the myriad relationships that make up the social matrix of communication. As Martin Buber wrote, “man did not exist before having a fellow being, before he lived over against him, toward him, and that means before he had dealings with him. Language never existed before address” ( 1998 , p. 105). The relational thread of communication ethics calls upon us to never lose sight of the radical alterity, or otherness, of the other. That is, we are asked to never mistake our understanding of the other for the other herself , never to impose our meaning and understanding upon him, never to attempt to absorb/assimilate/appropriate the other into ourselves. We are enjoined to avoid absorbing the other’s difference into my own same .

One of the central concerns of communication ethics pertains to our relation to others and, in particular, to the radical otherness , or alterity, of others. Postmodern and post-colonial literatures have clearly identified and lucidly critiqued the many ways in which political hegemons cast the other in the role of feared and threatening stranger where the other is depicted as without humanity or legitimacy, resulting in patterns of annihilation, oppression, and alienation or of appropriation, assimilation, and absorption. In contrast, the ethical relation to alterity approaches the other as welcomed—as “the stranger, the widow, the orphan” (Levinas, 1969 , p. 77). To Levinas, the other is a moral center to whom one owes everything, and the other must always come first, not last: “To recognize the Other is to recognize a hunger. To recognize the Other is to give. But it is to give to the master, to the lord, to him whom one approaches as ‘Vous’ in a dimension of height” ( 1969 , p. 75).

In writing about this second, ethical sense of alterity, Levinas observes how the other is always more than she appears: “The face of the Other at each moment destroys and overflows the plastic image it leaves me” ( 1969 , p. 51). The acknowledgment of alterity enables speakers to acknowledge, if not honor, radical differences in thought, belief, political and social location, communicative, symbolic and social capital, and so forth. Other aspects of alterity that arise in communication ethics involve relations of alienation, ambiguity, asymmetry, contradiction, cosmopolitanism, discord, diversity, incongruity, interruption, intersectionality, and ostracism (Arneson, 2014 ; Hyde, 2012 ; Pinchevski, 2005 ).

Thus, unlike a Habermasian discourse ethics of the ideal speech situation, where interlocutors are instructed to “bracket status differentials and deliberate as if they were social equals,” (Fraser, 1994 , p. 117), or a Rawlsian theory of justice, which asks interlocutors to deliberate behind a “veil of ignorance,” alterity deliberately invites and acknowledges difference, acknowledging that each of us arrive “on the scene” of communication with different histories, traditions, values, and experiences. The acknowledgment of alterity gives rise to a sense of ethical responsibility—the ability to respond to the other—which leads to compassion. To Buber, therefore, “Genuine responsibility exists only when there is real responding” ( 1975 , p. 16). Ethical compassion arises not because one identifies with the others’ suffering but because one recognizes the other’s alterity, and therefore, her suffering. As Noddings writes, “I do not ‘put myself in the other's shoes,’ so to speak, by analyzing his reality as objective data and then asking, ‘How would I feel in such a situation?’ On the contrary, I set aside my temptation to analyze and plan. I do not project; I receive the other into myself, and I see and feel with the other” ( 1984 , p. 30).

Noddings illustrates the idea of empathic engrossment as our response to an infant crying. We know something is wrong, and the infant’s feeling becomes ours. This is not a problem-solving state, but a feeling-with state. Thus ethical compassion is not vulnerable to ideological ideas about worthy and unworthy suffering but simply feels with the other because she is suffering. Therefore, relational compassion is open to transformation of the self wherein “we are not attempting to transform the world, but we are allowing ourselves to be transformed” (Noddings, 1984 , p. 34). The relational dimension of communication ethics are also important in feminist care-based ethics, focusing less on the rights of individuals and more upon caring responsibilities in relationships (Tronto, 1993 ). Other dimensions of compassion that arise in communication ethics involve acknowledgment, advocacy, affirmation, amnesty, atonement, attunement, embodiment, forgiveness, generosity, gratitude, humility, kindness, leisure, precarity, reconciliation, and sharing (Arnett, 2013 ; Holba, 2014 ).

Discussion of the Literature: Five Modes of Ethical Reasoning

As a branch of philosophy, ethics concerns questions about what makes some actions right and some wrong in a given context. Throughout history all cultures have developed particular doctrines or philosophies of the good, many of which are classified in the West along four primary lines: virtue ethics , which locate the good in the virtuous character and qualities of actions or individuals; deontological ethics , which locate the good in an act or an individual’s adherence to duties or principles; teleological ethics , which locate the good in the consequences of actions and choices; and dialogic ethics , which locate the good in the relations between persons. During the 20th century , postmodern ethics has called these prior ethical theories into question by challenging not merely the value of rules, procedures, systems, and fixed categories for understanding or theorizing ethics, but the humanist ideas of persons as autonomous agents who can act independently as ethical agents. Below are described five such modes of ethical reasoning.

Most commonly associated with the 5th-century bce Greek philosopher Aristotle, virtue ethics focus on the choice, cultivation, and enactment of “virtuous” qualities, such as courage, temperance, truthfulness, and justice, in both the individual and in civic life. In his foundational Nicomachean Ethics , Aristotle ( 1998 ) describes how virtue is an expression of character in which we become temperate by doing temperate acts. In the Aristotelian sense, then, ethics are a human activity rather than a creed, principle, or goal. Most religious traditions articulate a number of overlapping virtues, many of which derive in turn from even earlier traditions and cultures. For example, the so-called cardinal virtues of 12th-century Roman Christianity emphasize courage, prudence, temperance, and justice; these were derived from the earlier Greek philosophies of Plato and Aristotle that in turn derive from far earlier Egyptian wisdom literature (ca. 3000 bce ). Similarly, the 5th-century bce Paramitas of Indian Buddhism stress generosity, patience, honesty, and compassion and are derived in part from virtues articulated in Hindu scriptures that originated around 1000 bce . Further east in 5th-century bce China, both Confusianism and Taoism identified virtues such as empathy, reciprocity, and harmony for the cultivation of an ethical personal and civic life. Even the 18th-century American political virtues of Jeffersonian democracy (inscribed in the Declaration of Independence as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) derive in part from the Aristotelian idea of eudaimonia , the happiness caused by living a virtuous life. Outside of religious traditions, contemporary Euro-American theorists of ethical virtue, sometimes called neo-Aristotelians, locate virtue variously, for example, in the enactment of intentions and motives (Phillipa Foot, Michael Slote), in practical action or phronesis (Alasdair MacIntyre), and in the civic value of emotions, especially compassion (Martha Nussbaum).

Deontological ethics (derived from the Greek word for duty ) are most commonly associated with the 18th-century Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant, who constructed a theory of moral reasoning based not on virtues, outcomes, or emotions but on duties and obligations. In his book Foundations for a Metaphysics of Morals , Kant proposes that ethics are based on a universal law that he calls the categorical imperative . Sometimes mistakenly confused with the golden rule (i.e., do unto others as you would have them do unto you ), the categorical imperative holds that a person should only act on the principles that she or he would want everyone else to always act upon. Kant’s universal law is categorical because there are absolutely no exceptions under any conditions, and it is imperative because it is a necessary duty to which everyone must adhere. But the imperative is dictated not by goods in and of themselves, but by logical reasoning. For example, Kant argues that the ethical prohibition against lying is a categorical imperative because if lying were universalized, no one would believe lies, which depend for themselves on public trust. Bok’s work on lying builds upon this logical contradiction inherent in lying. Similarly, the second formulation of Kant’s categorical imperative—which states that we should never treat people as means to our ends, but always as ends in and of themselves—is readily understood as a universalizable, prohibitive law. Other deontological ethical theories include religious and monastic approaches (such as adhering to divine commands, doctrinal principles, and the fulfillment of monastic vows) and social-contract theories based on the philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Jeans-Jacques Rousseau. In contemporary Euro-American contexts, deontologists, also called neo-Kantians, have developed rights-based approaches (e.g., John Rawls’s theory of justice ), discourse-based approaches (e.g., Jürgen Habermas’s discourse ethics ), and contract-based approaches (e.g., Thomas Scanlon’s contractualism ). Significantly for communication, both Habermas’s and Rawls’s theories center on processes of communication from which ethical norms and principles are derived. For example, Habermas’s discourse ethics prescribes the development and acceptance of rationally grounded validity claims and nontranscendable norms that are produced in democratic argumentation, whereas Rawls’s theory of justice relies upon the discursive achievement of overlapping consensus and public reason . Both approaches have been critiqued on a number of grounds from differing theoretical perspectives, including feminist, postmodernist, Marxist, communitarian, libertarian, and noncognitivist. For example, Chantal Mouffe critiques both Habermas’s and Rawls’s theories because they rely upon idealized, conceptually impossible, and hyper-rational models of deliberative democracy.

Sometimes considered the foil of deontological ethics, teleologica l (from the Greek word for goal ) ethical theories (also known as consequentialist ) exercise moral judgments based on the outcomes and consequences of actions rather than on principles, duties, or virtues. Among the most common ethical theories are utilitarianism and ethical egoism . Utilitarianism, associated with the 18th-century British philosophies of John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, theorizes that we are ethically bound to do what is best for the most people. According to Mill, for example, actions are good when they promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number . In the contemporary Euro-American context, consequentialist theorists include Peter Singer, who extends utilitarianism to include the good of animals and other beings on the planet; Shelly Kagan, who defends consequentialism from critiques by contemporary deontological ethicists; and Amartya Sen, who applies utilitarian ethics to economics, democracy, and public health. Another form of teleological ethics— ethical egoism (which is sometimes called rational self-interest theory)—theorizes that all ethical actions are ultimately self-serving, even those that appear to be self-sacrificing. Some contemporary theorists argue an ethical egoist position from a psychological point of view that stresses the emotional and social benefits of ethical actions to self, whereas others argue ethical egoism from an evolutionary point of view that stresses the genetic and biological benefits to self. Still others argue ethical egoism from a rational point of view, positing that both individuals and society benefit when each individual benefits. Teleological ethics have been critiqued on a number of grounds from a number of perspectives, especially the deontological and virtue-based approaches. Martha Nussbaum, for example, argues that consequentialist reasoning all too easily leads to a kind of heartless cost-benefit calculation that excludes the full expanses of the ethical.

Associated largely with late 20th-century Euro-American philosophers, such as Zygmunt Bauman, Joseph Caputo, and Michel Foucault, but also with feminist ethicists such as Carol Gilligan, Joan Tronto, and Nel Noddings, postmodern ethicists critique so-called modernist and enlightenment ethical philosophies such as virtue, deontological, and teleological ethics. Rather than conceptualizing human beings as free, autonomous, independent, and rational agents, as do the modernist theorists, postmodernists view human beings as inter-related, interdependent, contradictory, emotional, and, occasionally at least, irrational social beings. Drawing in part on the 19th-century philosopher Frederick Nietzsche, who crafted a brilliant challenge to traditional religion, philosophy, and morality, postmodern ethicists further reject modernist ideals of certainty, universalism, and essentialism, as well as rules, codifications, and systems. In place of ethical rules or precepts, for example, Zygmunt Bauman posits the idea of moral responsibility in which each person must stretch out towards others in pursuit of the good in all situations, even, or perhaps most especially, when what is the good is most uncertain. Thus, Bauman cautions against certainty, calculation, and precept, arguing that reason alone is an insufficient basis for ethical action. Similarly, feminist ethicists from a range of perspectives, such as Annette Baier’s virtue-oriented ethics to Chantal Mouffe’s Marxist-oriented ethics, critique deontological perspectives such as Rawls’s idea of the priority of the right over the good because it categorically privileges individualistic and abstract rights over collective goods and values. From a somewhat different postmodern perspective, Michel Foucault posits ethics as caring for the self through what he calls a practice of freedom . Joseph Caputo, in contrast, argues against ethics itself and in its place posits the affirmation of the other, the singularity of each ethical situation, and the centrality of the unqualified, unconditional gift that requires precisely those things that are not required.

Rather than theorizing an ethics based in individual character, duty, outcome, or interest, dialogic ethics locates the ethical in the intersubjective sphere of communicative relationships between and among persons. The issues of response and responsibility are woven into the center of dialogic ethics. Associated largely with the work of two 20th-century Jewish European philosophers, Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas, dialogic ethics posits ethics as first philosophy wherein the ethical relation with the other, rather than the ontology of the self, is understood to be foundational to human experience. To Buber, the person becomes a person by saying Thou and thereby entering into relation with other persons. The Thou , in Buber’s understanding, is not a monadic subjectivity but a relation of intersubjectivity , or development of mutual meaning, that arises from people cohabiting communication exchanges in which understanding arises from what happens in between the subjectivity of persons. To Levinas, one’s personal subjectivity can only arise through one’s own responsibility to the other , who is utterly different from oneself and to whom one owes everything. Dialogic ethics thus requires a healthy respect for the irreducible alerity , or otherness, of persons with whom one has dialogue, wherein the self never mistakes its own understanding of the other for the other herself. In the context of communication studies, dialogic ethics has generated a rich body of research by contemporary scholars such as Kenneth Anderson, Ronald Arnett, Rob Cissna, Michael Hyde, and Jeffrey Murray, wherein the ultimate issues in communication ethics pertain not so much to words themselves but rather to the ethical realm in which communication is constitutive of persons, cultures, publics, and relationships. For example, to Cissna and Anderson, dialogic ethics involve an awakening of other-awareness that occurs in and through a moment of meeting.

In the field of communication, ethicists make use of all of the above theories in approaching questions of ethics in interpersonal, intercultural, mediated, institutional, organizational, rhetorical, political, and public communication contexts. Clifford Christians and Michael Traber, for example, take a deontological approach in searching for ethical universals and protonorms across cultures. In contrast, Josina Makau and Ronald Arnett take a more dialogic approach in a volume on communication ethics and diversity. In contrast, Fred Casmir takes a multi-perspectival approach to intercultural and international communication ethics. More recently, Michael Hyde has drawn on the dialogic ethics of Emmanuel Levinas to explore ethical rhetorical action in personal and public life, and Sharon Bracci and Clifford Christians have brought a wide range of ethical perspectives to bear on a range of communication questions.

In the classroom, communication ethicists emphasize the importance of cultivating attunement to silences, erasures, and misrecognitions that occur when one voice speaks in place of another or when another is silenced. By asking questions such as who speaks, who is heard, or whose voice is rendered unintelligible, students are encouraged to more fully recognize both tacit and overt ethical questions in all manner of communicative interactions. While most communication ethics textbooks tend to include some combination of theory, disciplinary context, and applied context, each tends to principally emphasize one or two of these areas. Some communication ethics textbooks are organized principally around modes of moral reasoning, while others address ethics as it is understood in different areas of the field. Some textbooks are embedded in specific applied contexts such as the workplace or the media, and some attempt to combine theory, disciplinary context, and value.

Addendum: Some Key Themes of Communication Ethics

Websites/other information.

Communication Ethics Division of NCA: http://commethics.org/news/

Institute of Communication Ethics: http://www.communicationethics.net/sales/index.php?nav=book .

Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory: http://rhetoric.eserver.org/quintilian/

MindEdge Online Learning

Corporate, Continuing, and Higher Education

Ethical Communication in the Workplace

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By Tricia Goodwin Senior Editor, MindEdge Learning

Most of us spend half (or more than half) of our waking hours in the workplace, whether it’s physical or virtual.

At work, we communicate with a range of people with different roles, experiences, cultures, perspectives, and power levels. Knowing how to communicate skillfully across such a wide spectrum of colleagues is an essential skill set in the modern workplace.

Workplace communication often involves the delicate intersection of authority, power dynamics, and collaborative teamwork. We often refer to this intersection as “workplace politics,” though these politics have less to do with the White House and more to do with the underlying attitudes that influence how ideas are received and adopted within a workplace.

But what do we mean by authority and power, and how do these relate to collaborative teamwork? While “authority” is the power that comes with a specific role or title, “power dynamics” refers to the ability of one person to influence the behavior and attitudes of others— and how those others respond to the person with influence. The “power” of one individual or team over others sometimes sets up an unhealthy dynamic that can be reinforced through communication styles. Indeed, the quality and tenor of communication may have a negative impact on different individuals and teams— and that, in turn, can affect the entire company’s well-being.

Over the last few years, the news has been full of stories detailing how communications between authority figures and workplace subordinates have led to deeply troubling power dynamics. Companies, therefore, need to model and practice ethical communication at both the policy and everyday levels, to maintain healthy workplace politics.

“Ethics” refers to the behavior of people to choose the right or best path, and to make the most correct choice from a variety of choices; this includes how and why they communicate with their colleagues and clients. In the workplace, you will face a variety of ethical choices that can influence how others relate to you and how deeply they value you as a coworker. Your communication, therefore, needs to reflect your ethics.

What does it mean, then, to communicate ethically in the workplace?

Honesty should be the cornerstone of all your workplace communications. Honesty builds trust between you and authority figures, as well as between you and your colleagues and clients. Communication can be both verbal and non-verbal. Your actions are just as important as what you say or write. Honest communication not only builds trust, it also helps you and others identify and work on any fissures that may arise in the intersection between authority, power, and teamwork. Without honesty, communication fails at its core purpose.

Transparency

When communicating in your workplace, transparency is key. First, you need to be clear in your purpose and message. You also need to be lawful (i.e., you must know the laws and regulations that govern communication in your industry); reveal any research that contributed to the content of your communication; and identify any errors you’ve made. Your willingness to admit when you are wrong not only shows your degree of honesty, it also shows how you and your colleagues can learn from your mistakes.

Respect is essential to ethical workplace communication. This concept should seem self-evident, yet there are many ways in which a lack of understanding can result in workplace communications that lack proper respect. Consider, for instance, whether there are cultural or gender differences and dynamics in your workplace; if there are, you should fashion a communication plan that builds equitable bridges between these differences, rather than relying on outdated hierarchies that stymie communication.

How can you do this? Be a careful listener, especially to those whose backgrounds and perspectives differ from your own. Use affirmation and encouragement to build bridges between communication gaps. Ask polite questions to help improve your cross-cultural competency, both within your company and outside it. Clue in to personal space, as different cultures have different social norms around personal space. Again, what you do often communicates as much as what you say and write.

Remember that effective, ethical communication is foundational to a healthy work environment, because it is how you represent yourself and your company as a whole. Ethical communication is, therefore, essential to fostering positive, respectful working relationships—both within your workplace, and between your workplace and others.

For a complete listing of MindEdge’s course offerings on business communications skills, click here.

[An earlier version of this article ran in the MindEdge Learning Workshop Blog on April 13, 2018.]

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10.4: The Importance of Ethical and Accurate Language

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E. Michele Ramsey@Penn State-Berks
Millersville University via Public Speaking Project

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language and ethics

As was noted at the beginning of this chapter, language is culturally transmitted—we learn our language from those around us. For most of us this means that we may first learn language from our parents, but as we grow older, other family members, friends, educators and even the media impact our vocabularies and our choices regarding what language we use. Think about a world without language. Quite simply, we’d have no way of participating in our world without it. People constantly produce language to categorize and organize the world.

Think back to our discussion of how language influences your social reality. In my work as a mentor, I tutored a girl in elementary school who had a very difficult time saying the word “lake.” I used the word “lake” as part of a homework exercise. What I had not realized was that she had never seen a lake, either in person or in a picture, or, if she had seen a lake no one had pointed to that body of water and called it a “lake.” The concept of a “lake” was simply not in her reality. No “lakes” existed in her world. This is a key example of how the language that we learn and that we choose to use says something about our social reality.

Consider the above example another way. Let’s say that my young friend had seen a lake and knew how to say the word and what the word referred to, but that she had only been privy to people who used the word negatively. If throughout her life “lakes” were discussed as “bad things” to be avoided, she would have a very different perspective on lakes than most people. Switching this example around a little helps illustrate the fact that language is not neutral. Language carries ideas, and while there is often more than one choice in terms of which word to use, often the words from which you are choosing are not equal in terms of the reality that they communicate.

Think about the difference between calling a specific place “the projects” versus calling that same place “public housing.” Both phrases refer to a particular geographical space, but calling a neighborhood “the projects” as opposed to “public housing” communicates something very different, and more negative, about this neighborhood. Often students use the words that they hear more commonly used, so referring to “the projects” as opposed to “public housing” usually indicates that they have not thought enough about their word choices or thought about the impact of those choices.

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. ~ George Carlin

As this example points out, we have a variety of words from which to choose when constructing a message. Successful speakers recognize that in addition to choosing words that help with clarity and vividness, it is important to think about the connotations associated with one word or the other. When speakers are not careful in terms of word choice in this sense, it is possible to lose credibility with the audience and to create the perception that you are someone that perhaps you are not. If you use “the projects” instead of “public housing,” audience members may view you as someone who has negative perceptions of people who live in public housing when you do not feel that way at all. Clearly, not being careful about language choices can be a costly mistake.

But what do these examples have to do with ethics? For our purposes here, there are two ways to think about communication and ethics. First, ethical communication is that which does not unfairly label one thing or another based on personal bias. So, in addition to choosing “public housing” over “the projects,” an ethical speaker will choose terms that steer clear from intentional bias. For example, pro-life

speakers would refrain from calling “pro-choice” people “pro-abortion” since the basic principle of the “pro- choice” position is that it is up to the person, not society, to choose whether or not an abortion is acceptable. That is a very different position than being “pro-abortion.” Indeed, many pro- choice citizens would not choose abortion if faced with an unplanned pregnancy; therefore calling them “pro- abortion” does not reflect the reality of the situation; rather, it is the purposeful and unethical use of one term over the other for emotional impact. Similarly, if a pro-choice person is addressing a crowd where religious organizations are protesting against the legality of abortion, it would not be ethical for the pro-choice speaker to refer to the “anti- abortion” protestors as “religious fanatics.” Simply because someone is protesting abortion on religious grounds does not make that person a “religious fanatic,” and as in the first example, choosing the latter phrase is another purposeful and unethical use of one term over another for emotional impact.

Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides. ~ Rita Mae Brown

A second way to link communication and ethics is to remember that ethical speakers attempt to communicate reality to the best of their ability. Granted, as was noted above, each person’s social reality is different, depending on background, influences, and cultural institutions, for example. But regardless of whether you think that a “lake” is a good or bad thing, lakes still exist in reality. Regardless of whether or not you think rocks are useful or not, rocks still exist. So ethical communication also means trying to define or explain your subject in terms that are as closely tied to an objective reality as is possible—it is your best attempt to communicate accurately about your topic. Sexist and heterosexist language are two types of language to be avoided by ethical speakers because each type of language does communicate inaccuracies to the audience.

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sexist and heterosexist language

One of the primary means by which speakers regularly communicate inaccurate information is through the use of sexist language. In spite of the fact that the Modern Language Association deemed sexist language as grammatically incorrect back in the 1970s, many people and institutions (including most colleges and universities) still regularly use sexist language in their communication.

An argument I regularly hear from students is that language has “always been sexist.” This is, in fact, not true. As Dale Spender notes in her book,Man Made Language, until 1746 when John Kirkby formulated his “Eighty Eight Grammatical Rules,” the words “they” and “their” were used in sentences for sex-indeterminable sentences (Spender, 1990, pp. 148- 149.) Kirkby’s rule number twenty-one stated that the male sex was more comprehensive than the female and thus argued that “he” was the grammatically correct way to note menand women in writing where mixed sexed or sex-indeterminable situations are referred to (Spender, 1990, pp. 148- 149). Women were not given equal access to education at this time and thus the male grammarians who filled the halls of the academy and had no incentive to disagree with Mr. Kirkby, accepted his eighty-eight rules in full.

Interestingly though, the general population was not as easily convinced. Perhaps because they were not used to identifying women as men in language or perhaps because it did not make rational sense to do so, the general public ignored rule number twenty-one.

Incensed by the continued misuse of “they,” male grammarians were influential in the passing of the 1850 Act of Parliament which legally asserted that “he” stood for “she” (Spender, 1990, p. 150), Yes, you read correctly. Parliament passed legislation in an effort to promote the use of sexist language. And it worked! Eventually the rule was adhered to by the public and thus we have the regular and rarely challenged use of sexist language. But this use of language was not “natural” or even “normal” for many millennia.

Pretending that we haven’t learned about the work of Dale Spender, let’s assume that language has “always been sexist.” Even if language was always sexist, that does not make the use of sexist language right. We wouldn’t make a similar argument about racist language, so that argument isn’t any stronger with regard to language that is sexist. It simply isn’t acceptable today to use sexist language; and by learning to avoid these common mistakes, you can avoid using language that is grammatically incorrect, unethical, and problematic. See Table 10.1 for examples of sexist and non-sexist language.

Is your remarkably sexist drivel intentional, or just some horrible mistake? ~ Yeardley Smith

First, you should avoid the use of what is called the generic “he” or “man,” which is the use of terms such as “mankind” instead of “humankind” or “humanity,” or the use of “man” or “he” to refer to all people. A common response from students with regard to the use of “generic he” is that the word is intended to represent men and women, therefore when it’s used it is not used to be sexist. If it were really the case that people truly recognized in their minds that the term “man” includes women, then we would talk about situations in which “man has difficulty giving birth” (Spender, 1990, p. 156) or the “impact of menstruation on man’s biology.” Of course, we do

not say those things because they simply wouldn’t make sense to us. Perhaps you can now see why the people of the 1700s and 1800s had trouble switching from non-sexist to sexist language—it defied their own common sense just as discussing how “man gets pregnant” defies yours.

Second, you should avoid using man-linked terms , which are terms such as “fireman” or “policemen.” It is appropriate to use these terms when you know that the people you are speaking about are men only, but if you do not know for sure or if you’re talking about groups generally, you should avoid using these types of terms and replace them with “firefighters” and “police officers.” Colleges and universities should replace “freshman” with “first-year students” and so should you. Other, non job-oriented words also suffer from this same problem. People often note that tables need to be “manned” rather than “staffed” and that items are “man-made” instead of “human made” or “handmade.”

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A final common use of sexist language occurs when people use spotlighting when discussing the occupations of men and women. How often have you heard (or used) a phrase such as “he’s a male nurse” or “that female lawyer?” When we spotlight in these ways, we are pointing out that a person is deviating from the “norm” and implying that someone’s sex is relevant to a particular job. According to Peccei, in the English language there is a very strong tendency to “place the adjective expressing the most ‘defining’ characteristic closest to the noun” (Peccei, 2003, p. 118). Thus, as Turner points out, a phrase like the “old intelligent woman” violates our sense of “correct,” not because there’s anything wrong with the word order grammatically, but because it contradicts our customary way of thinking that values youth over age (Peccei, 2003, p. 118). If you talk about a “male nurse” or a “female cop,” you risk communicating to the audience that you believe the most salient aspect of a particular job is the sex of the person that normally does it, and some audience members may not appreciate that assumption on your part.

The use of sexist language is not just grammatically incorrect; its use is also linked to ethics because it communicates a reality that does not exist—it is not accurate. Man-linked language communicates male superiority and that there are more men than women because women are regularly erased linguistically in speech and writing. Man-linked terms and spotlighting communicate that some job activities are appropriate for men but not women and vice versa by putting focus on the sex of a person as linked to their job or activity. Finally, the use of the generic “he” or “man” communicates that men are the norm and women deviate from that norm. If all humans are called “man,” what does that say about women? Sexist language can also limit what young males and females believe that they can accomplish in their lives. Ethical speakers should therefore avoid using language that communicates these sexist practices.

Speakers who choose to continue to use sexist language are not only speaking in a manner that is grammatically incorrect, they are also risking communicating negative ideas about themselves to audience members. Often the use of sexist language is because of a careless error, so be careful about language choice so that you don’t accidentally communicate something about yourself that you didn’t intend or that isn’t true. Remember that if one person in your audience is offended by some aspect of your language use, they may share their opinions with others in the room. If that one person is a leader of the larger group or is someone whose opinions people care about, offending that one audience member may cause you to “lose” many other audience members as well.

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Heterosexist language is language that assumes the heterosexual orientation of a person or group of people. Be careful when speaking not to use words or phrases that assume the sexual orientation of your audience members. Do not make the mistake of pointing to someone in your audience as an example and discussing that person with the assumption that she is heterosexual by saying something like, “Let’s say this woman here is having trouble with her husband.” When thinking of examples to use, consider using names that could ring true for heterosexuals and homosexuals alike. Instead of talking about Pat and Martha, discuss an issue involving Pat and Chris. Not only will you avoid language that assumes everyone’s partner is of the opposite sex, you will also better your chances of persuading using your example. If the use of sex- specific names doesn’t ring true with members of your audience that are homosexual, it is possible that they are not as likely to continue to listen to your example with the same level of interest. They are more likely to follow your example if they aren’t confronted immediately with names that assume a heterosexual relationship. There are, of course, ethical considerations as well. Because it is likely that your entire audience is not heterosexual (and certainly they do not all hold heterosexist attitudes), using heterosexist language is another way that speakers may alienate audience members. In reality the world is not completely heterosexual and even in the unlikely case that you’re speaking in a room of consisting completely of heterosexuals, many people have friends or relatives that are homosexual, so the use of heterosexist language to construct the world as if this were not the case runs counter to ethical communication.

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1.1: Guidelines for Ethical Communication

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Learning Outcomes

Identify key guidelines for ethical business communication

It’s not enough for a communicator to craft a message that’s clearly understood by his audience, leveraging the seven principles of business communication:

Understanding of Audience Knowledge

In reality, if you adhere to the seven principles, you will communicate ethically. For instance, if you craft a message that is not clear and concise, and you use tricky language that manipulates your consideration for your audience’s knowledge, then you are not being ethical. If you’re not being objective, and you are trying to communicate your opinion (or the opinion of others) as fact, then you are not being ethical. If you purposely do not disclose complete information, then you are not being ethical.

You don’t have to look too far today to see examples of unethical communication; they’re all over the media. “Fake news” media sites abound, even though social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter are making efforts to prevent them from being posted and shared. Is fake news ethical?

Daily World Update

Daily World Update is a fake news site that recently posted an article called “Black Woman Who Won Georgia Primary Arrested for Election Fraud.” The story talks about Michelle Agabobo Willford, running for governor of Georgia, who paid for “tens of thousands of votes” by promising free welfare. This story runs parallel to a real-life story of Stacy Abrahms. Abrahms recently won a primary elections as a candidate for Georgia governor (without paying for votes). Her success made news, because, if she wins, she will be the nation’s first black female governor.

Now, the Daily World Update claims to be a satirical site, and this article about Michelle Agabobo Willford fake, but if this news story is shared on social media, people just see the headline and jump to their own conclusions about what happened in Georgia. Is this ethical communication? Does it meet those seven business communication objectives above?

General Motors

General Motors now admits that over 100 people died because of faulty ignition switches that were not recalled. In an article in Forbes magazine, reporter Carmine Gallo claimed that “ Two Misleading Words Triggered GM’s Catastrophic Communication Breakdown .” The article discusses that the ignition issue was mis-labeled as a “customer convenience” issue and therefore didn’t get the attention it needed. Data about the issue was buried in the back of a 72-page PowerPoint deck. These were communication choices made by human beings. Was it a mistake, or was it unethical?

The seven principles of business communication should be enough to keep your messages ethical. But if you want further guidance as to what is and is not ethical in business communication, the International Association of Business Communicators outlines a code of ethics for all its members: [1]

I am honest—my actions bring respect for and trust in the communication profession.
I communicate accurate information and promptly correct any errors.
I obey laws and public policies; if I violate any law or public policy, I act promptly to correct the situation.
I protect confidential information while acting within the law.
I support the ideals of free speech, freedom of assembly, and access to an open marketplace of ideas.
I am sensitive to others’ cultural values and beliefs.
I give credit to others for their work and cite my sources.
I do not use confidential information for personal benefit.
I do not represent conflicting or competing interests without full disclosure and the written consent of those involved.
I do not accept undisclosed gifts or payments for professional services from anyone other than a client or employer.
I do not guarantee results that are beyond my power to deliver.

If you have any question regarding the ethics of a particular message, these guidelines should serve you well. Betraying the trust of your audience is lethal to effective communication.

Practice Question

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Principles of Ethical Decision Making

After ethical intensity, a thoughtful manager will consider the principles that might apply to an issue. There is no one set of principles to check off, but the seven listed here are common to most people.

Legal and regulatory requirements set the minimum standard for behavior. Any company or individual can disagree with the law, but given the consequences, such disagreement must be done carefully. The Hobby Lobby stores refused, on religious grounds, to follow the Affordable Care Act requirements for certain health benefits. The US Supreme Court found in their favor in 2014.
Long-term self-interest means the pursuit of outcomes that will benefit the self in the long run. For example, a company must make choices to ensure its continued existence. The costs and harm from failure are substantial.
Personal virtue refers to conformity to a standard of righteousness. You should make choices that are honest and truthful individually. The good of the company does not justify lying.
Utilitarianism seeks the greatest benefit for the maximum number of people. This is often difficult to judge over large groups of people.
Individual rights are related to the freedom to act and think without punishment through regulatory, legal, or societal means. For example, we make individual health decisions to smoke or drink beverages loaded with sugar even though the health costs are borne by many through private and government insurance programs.
Distributive justice is the fairness of the outcomes. That is, how are the benefits shared or distributed among the individuals in a group? The US market system can have winner-take-all outcomes. Our welfare system redistributes a little to the losers in the market game who are also part of our society.
Religious injunction is the main moral and ethical guide for many people.

Watch the following video for an overview of the ethical decision making process:

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International Association of Business Communicators, " IABC Code of Ethics for Professional Communicators ." ↵
Guidelines for Ethical Communication. Authored by : Freedom Learning Group. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
Principles of Ethical Decision Making. Authored by : Talia Lambarki and Lumen Learning. Located at : https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-principlesofmanagement . License : CC BY: Attribution
Image: Doors. Authored by : qimono. Located at : https://pixabay.com/en/doors-choices-choose-open-decision-1767564/ . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved
Video: Integrating Ethics: Ethical Decision-Making. Provided by : Academic Technologies (AT) at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), in partnership with the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission. Located at : https://youtu.be/IwK-CshmH7M . License : CC BY: Attribution

Ethical Communication and Its Importance: A Simple Guide

LHT Learning
May 5, 2022

The Importance of Ethical Communication

Ethical communication is essential for upholding a strong culture of compliance in the workplace. When done correctly, ethical communications can bolster your company’s character and decrease overall risk. However, when ethics are cast aside, businesses can face severe financial, legal, and reputational costs.

What Is Ethical Communication?

Put simply, ethical communication is communicating in a way that’s honest, open, clear, and respectful. These four pillars are essential for upholding strong communication ethics within your business. When even one pillar is left out, your foundation of ethics begins to weaken and crumble.

It may seem obvious, but don’t lie! Not only is it unethical, but spreading lies is the #1 way for your business to lose the trust of its customers and stakeholders. Without trust, your reputation will suffer, and customers are likely to stop buying from you . To ensure your communications are consistently honest, stick to the facts. Stretching the truth, making assumptions, and reading between the lines will only hurt your business in the long run.

Aside from confidential information, there’s usually no such thing as TMI in business. You need to pair your honesty with a willingness to share in order to be truly ethical. For example, a business may communicate in a way that’s technically 100% honest, but omits relevant information from customers and stakeholders. Because the withheld information has the potential to influence decision-making, the company is not practicing good communication ethics. Company’s need to be transparent about every relevant aspect of their business, even if the news is negative.

In many cases, misconduct isn’t born out of malicious intent, but misunderstanding. After all, it only takes one poorly worded document or passing comment to create a chain of confusion that spirals into misconduct. Because every person in your target audience must be able to understand your meaning, your business communications need to be as clear and concise as possible.

It should go without saying that ethical communications are respectful and tolerant in nature. When creating business communications, be mindful of the diverse identities of your intended audience and how they might interpret your message. The recipient should always feel like your company values their identity, ideas, and opinions. Using respectful communication will help promote a culture of open communication, decreasing potential retaliation and reporting concerns.

Dos and Don’ts of Ethical Communication

Even the smallest of communications can have a big impact on your workplace’s ethical culture. Knowing what to consider and what to avoid is essential when crafting your business communications.

Do: Consider Your Audience

Who is going to be on the receiving end of your communications? Your boss? Coworkers? Customers? Depending on who your message is intended for, your communication style will likely vary. In order to make your message as clear and relevant as possible, always keep your intended audience front of mind. Considering your recipient’s needs, knowledge level, and relationship to you will help eliminate any uncertainty or unintended interpretations.

Don’t: Use Jargon

Some businesses might be tempted to use wordy language and jargon to impress their audience. However, don’t fall into the trap of “sesquipedalian loquaciousness” (AKA using big words to appear smarter). In fact, studies show that needlessly using long, complex words actually makes you appear less intelligent . The most likely outcome is that recipients simply won’t understand what you’re trying to say. Ultimately, this leads them to wonder if you’re intentionally misleading them and calls your business ethics into question.

Do: Prioritize Accessibility

Your speaking and writing efforts are only as good as your ability to share them with your audience. Prioritizing accessibility across language, technology, and ability shows your business is dedicated to including all people in its communications.

Language Accessibility

The world is made up of over 7,000 different languages. While it would be impossible (and unnecessary) for your business to include every single one, you should make an effort to communicate in the language of your intended audience. When communicating directly in the target language isn’t an option, offering translation services or subtitles is another best-practice way to ensure your audience understands the message. For example, a global company should offer multiple language options in its eLearning training courses to ensure employees across the world understand its content.

Technology Accessibility

Despite the rapid advancement of technology, not everyone can access the internet or the equipment to do so reliably. Some audiences may have access to technology, but a limited understanding of its functionality. Businesses should consider what modes of communication their intended audience typically uses and make an effort to communicate across those channels. Not only is this a way to communicate ethically, but it’s an effective marketing strategy to meet customers where they’re at, even if it’s not in the digital realm. Companies can also use print resources and in-person training sessions to help bridge the technology gap among employees.

Disability Accessibility

Imagine your company is preparing a video presentation for a client. After you press play, you notice your client can’t understand its contents because she is hard of hearing and the video was not embedded with subtitles. This is a major and embarrassing oversight for the company that could have been resolved by better preparing the communication materials. Before deploying your communications, consider how people with disabilities might interact with them. Additionally, because many disabilities are invisible to the eye or undisclosed to the public, never assume that your materials aren’t in need of more work. It’s always a good practice to see how your company can improve its accessibility efforts.

Don’t: Betray Customer Privacy

Your clients and customers are trusting your company with their personal information, which you have an ethical duty to protect. However, before they hand over any information, customers need to feel reassured their data will be secure in your business’ hands. Ironically, the best way to protect sensitive data is by being frank and transparent. Be direct with your customers about what data you are collecting from them and why via a clear privacy policy. Most importantly, obtain explicit permission from your customers before collecting and give them options to opt-out of receiving business communications. Once you’ve obtained customer data, properly protect it in a secure network with limited employee access. Only collect and share the minimum amount of information necessary in order to minimize the potential for a data breach. Ultimately, protecting confidentiality and following transparent business practices is a balancing act that all businesses must master.

Do: Take Responsibility for Company Actions

At the end of the day, your business has a moral duty to practice ethical communication by standing up for what is right. That means stopping conversations that are heading toward a potentially non-compliant place and speaking up when you do witness misconduct. Taking responsibility can also go a long way to help your business rebuild trust after it’s been shattered. Following up with clear explanations of the company’s actions and committing to fixing the problem are also essential for holding your business accountable and mending relationships.

The Impact of Ethical Communication

Practicing ethical communication will help you build a foundation of trust in your business. Not only is practicing ethics the right thing to do — it’s profitable . The most ethical and just companies in America consistently outperform their competitors, usually by one to four stock percentage points. By standing to gain both a strong reputation and strong profit margins, your company has double the incentive to pay attention to ethical communication.

Want to learn more about communication ethics in practice? Check out our ethical communication training solutions or read our case study on the impact of unethical communication practices.

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Ethical Communication: The Basic Principles

First Published: October 23, 2020
Updated on: Oct 23, 2020

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The Basic Principles Of Ethical Communication

While project workflows, strategic planning, advanced technology, and business analyses are often topics associated with critical corporate discussions, an enterprise’s code of ethics – and its key ethical communication principles – is not often discussed. Businesses of all sizes rely on optimal person-to-person communication so that projects can be effectively completed, management and employees can understand each other, and for business to flow in the most efficient manner possible. While effective communication is necessary in all human relationships, it is even more critical in businesses of all sizes in order for confusion to be mitigated, and everyone is on the same page.

Humans rely on communication to express personal desires of what needs to be done, and how it is to be done. In a business, this is most important for both managers and employees to effectively express what they want done, and how they want it to be done. Communication is always a two-way, mutual set of actions that includes the communicator, and the receiver. Typically, communication will include two or more communicators and receivers, and spoken communication will often illicit a reply from the initial receiver.

A set of clear-cut principles exists, that every business should follow, to ensure all personnel, including C-suite executives and employees, effectively and ethically communicate in the workplace. Ultimately creating a comfortable, efficient environment where everyone is on the same page, and everyone is aligned to the principles and values of the enterprise. These ethical communication principles stem form a critical framework of values that every CEO should seek to discuss with all employees, executives, managers, and shareholders so the business is able to effectively leverage its relationships to better its bottom and top lines.

What Is Ethical Communication?

While hard skills are invaluable in any industry, there is a greater knowledge among SMEs – and larger enterprises – that soft skills and emotional intelligence are just as important in establishing effective workplace relationships that can produce results. While logical intelligence denotes one’s cognitive brainpower, emotional intelligence is based on an empathetic ability to understand people, which relates to having the ability to effectively communicate with people. Soft skills represent the other side of an employee’s personal skill set, and encompasses a group of workplace competencies focusing on working well with others – including the most critical soft skill, which is the skill of communication. And while there are many different types of communication principles that businesses need to know about, ethical communication is the most important.

Ethical Communication Defined

Ethical communication is a type of communication that is predicated upon certain business values, such as being truthful, concise, and responsible with one’s words and the resulting actions. As a set of principles, ethical communication understands that one’s thoughts must be conveyed and expressed effectively and concisely, and that the resulting actions or consequences will [potentially] be based solely on how the message was communicated. Thus, ethical communication defines a framework or set of acceptable communication principles that align with an enterprise’s overarching code of conduct or code of ethics.

Fundamentals Of Ethical Communication

Perhaps the main principle of ethical communication is honesty, as other factors stem from this core value of presenting information in the most reliable and factual way possible. Any attempt to mislead or present confusing information is not ethical communication. Additionally, the “honesty” principle of ethical communication is linked inexorably to other core principles – consistency and responsibility. This entails that information presented to different parties be consistent, and that short-term and long-term consequences of honest communication are to be accepted as one’s responsibility.

Ethical communication also assumes that communicated information is always presented (and received by the listener) according to one’s subjective perception, even if only in the most minimal way, and thus the goal of ethical communication is to be as objective as possible when communicating with others and to ensure that every recipient receives the same message.

Openness and Transparency

Truthfulness & honesty is the most core principle of ethical communication. This means that speaking 99 percent of the truth in a matter – while leaving out one percent of the facts – is not ethical communication, as omitting any detail (intentionally) changes the way that a listener will perceive an event. Thus, being 100 percent open and transparent, and hiding nothing, is key in order for all business relationships – whether within a business between its members, or with business and their partners, or even customers – to succeed in the short term and long term.

Being honest is linked to one’s personal and professional trustworthiness and integrity. In a perfect world, all members of an organization would have a positive reputation of honesty, such that listeners never doubt that what they are saying is 100 percent true. Within an organization – and between businesses – this type of honest communication can be the difference between a project being completed successfully or not. For instance, utilizing ethical communication, to be honest about the time and/or budget constraints during a board meeting with primary stakeholders can be the difference between the project meeting its goals, or failing due to misunderstandings and/or miscommunication. Thus, one of the primary goals of ethical communication is to prevent any misunderstandings or instances of miscommunication.

Consideration for Any Potential Roadblocks

When communicating with another party, truly ethical communication entails considering any potential factor that may influence how the recipient understands – or receives – the information that is being communicated. If there are any known roadblocks, then ethical communication principles dictate that the speaker/communicator utilize whatever means possible to mitigate or attenuate the roadblocks and ensure that the recipients of the information are able to fully understand what is being communicated.

Several examples are below where roadblocks may present themselves, resulting in the communicator needing to take steps to attenuate any potential instances of miscommunication:

Language Use

Obviously, ethical communication dictates that speakers utilize the language that listeners understand. It would make little sense to present a business presentation in English to a non-English speaking Chinese audience. Taking this example further, it would also be unethical to communicate the information mostly in Chinese, with a certain section in English, presenting only parts of the data to the Chinese audience.

Every industry has its own jargon. When speaking to a layperson, it is ethical to speak with simple, easy-to-understand words, while avoiding the use of heavy jargon, resulting in portions of the presentation/communication being incomprehensible to a portion of the audience.

Language Fluency

Ethical communication takes into account the level of fluency as well as the language spoken by listeners so that recipients of the communication (whether it be spoken or written) are able to fully understand what is being communicated.

Accessibility to Technology

In this information and digital age, some take accessibility to advanced technology for granted. For instance, while smartphones are readily available, and translation apps are abundant, not everyone is able to access such applications or platforms. If a business wanted to present certain pieces of information to an audience while expecting the audience to translate it into their native language via an application, there may be confusion. Thus, the ability to access certain technology – and the know-how on how to use certain applications – may be a roadblock when it comes to ethically communicating to a particular audience.

Development of Relationship

The art of communication allows people to express themselves in order to develop relationships. In business, this can be an employee dealing with a manager, executives communicating with stakeholders, or managers talking with other business representatives. It is critical for there to be no confusion or misunderstandings when businesses try to develop relationships within themselves and with other business entities or clients/customers. To accomplish this, ethical communication principles must be followed, ensuring that all parties can receive the consistent truth, and understand what needs to be done, and how it needs to be done.

Principles of Ethical Communication

There are a myriad of core principles associated with ethical communication, starting with the core value of honesty that all other values are connected to. However, it can be said that there is a value underlying honesty (with regard to ethical communication) and that is emotional intelligence/empathy as the precursor of all soft skills, which allows all personnel to be understood, and to effectively communicate with others. Emotional intelligence, within the framework of ethical communication, allows one to understand the needs of others, and meet those needs in the most efficient manner possible as if you were in their shoes.

1. Be Truthful And Honest

Being honest means communicating what is known to be true (only 100 percent the facts) to a listener, with no intent to deceive or present only parts of the truth. It also means being as objective as possible, that is, not tailoring the story based on what the speaker wants the listener to believe. Letting the listener take the data that is objectively presented and believe what they choose to believe is a core goal of ethical communication. Ethical communication should be based on accurate information and facts – in a word, do not lie.

2. Active Listening

Hearing someone and listening to them are two different things. In order for ethical communication to be effective, it is necessary for the recipient to pro-actively listen to the speaker, and to not just hear what they want to hear, or to hear only parts of the conversation. This also means asking questions when any point is not completely understood, for the sake of clarification.

3. Speak Non-Judgmentally

Ethically and concisely communicating means speaking in a non-judgmental manner with every recipient, negating unnecessary conflict, which typically creates a breakdown in communication and causes misunderstandings. Unnecessary conflict is never good for any business, and such conflicts usually result from unethical communications, with judgmental, accusatory, and overly-critical comments often being the catalyst for such breakdowns in communication.

4. Speak From Your Own Experience

Bringing your personal experience into a dialogue with business listeners is important, providing backup for your arguments with something more tangible. Such a communication method (experiential communication) paints a complete picture for your audience and helps to prove your points so that the listeners have a better understanding of what is being said.

5. Consider the Receiver’s Preferred Communication Channel

You risk losing an audience if you use a communication channel that is not preferred by your intended receiver. To effectively communicate with your listeners, use the most preferred communication channel, whether that be face-to-face, email, conference call, phone call, messenger app, etc. Also, when presenting data to a business audience, be aware of the preferred method of presentation for that business, whether it be graphs, slides, PowerPoint presentations, etc. Additionally, since body language is very important, it is often preferred to meet business clients face-to-face.

6. Strive To Understand

While it is important to be proactive in listening, it is important for listeners to also strive to fully understand what is being said before responding. While asking for clarification or confirmation of a point is fine, many times questions that listeners pose have already been answered. Listeners should think about what has been said before constructing a reply. Reading “in between the lines” is also an important skill that allows for understanding what isn’t said, but was implicitly said or implied.

7. Avoid A Negative Tone

Ethically communicating assumes the speaker will avoid rudeness, be polite and professional, and have tact. The ethical communicator knows that it’s not only important what you say, but how you say it. Tone is one of the most critical facets of communication. A listener may miss the meaning altogether if the tone is wrong, which can lead to unnecessary confrontations that decrease business productivity.

Controlling one’s tone goes along with self-control, a soft skill that allows one to know how they wish to reply to a terse business message (for instance) versus the most effective manner for replying. Essentially, keeping the tone positive or neutral is best, as the tone of a written message – or of one’s voice – is always picked up by the receiver, and can alter how the message is received and/or understood.

Additionally, while it is acceptable to be honest and open, tact – and professional maturity – means knowing when it is inappropriate to speak up, and when it is crucial to. Tact also means knowing that being completely honest does not equate with being rude or negative – it is possible to be completely honest and open with one’s thoughts and feelings while still remaining polite and respectful.

8. Do Not Interrupt Others

Allowing others to speak is important for the creation of a civil, effective working environment. Interrupting others results in misunderstandings and unnecessary conflicts and a breakdown in workplace communications, which only hinders corporate progress and creates problems. Interrupting others not only shows a lack of respect, but does not allow the listener to fully grasp what is being said, which often results in incorrect assumptions being made.

9. Respect Privacy And Confidentiality

Most businesses should include a clause in their code of ethics defining what is appropriate when it comes to honoring client and employee confidentiality and privacy. This can have a wide range of implications, including minimizing workplace gossip, and mitigating toxic conversations about the private lives of clients and/or personnel.

10. Accept Responsibility

As noted before, a core tenant within any ethical communication framework is taking responsibility for the actions that result from one’s words, whether it be good or bad. This includes both short term and long term consequences of one’s communications. Owning one’s words reinforces the importance of being conscientious about ethical communication.

Example Of Ethical Communication

There are a myriad of examples of how ethical communication can change the outcome of a problem in a business or workplace environment, revealing why ethical communication principles should be followed:

Medical industry: In the medical industry, not only is there the key HIPAA regulation , but there are numerous medical codes of ethics that medical professionals have to follow, with regard to their actions, conduct, and communications. These principles ensure that all patients and fellow medical professionals have their rights protected. For instance, doctors are required by law to not divulge private information about patients to anyone whom the patient has not consented to be privy to such private info.
Property Consulting industry: Ethical communications in the property consulting industry can take several forms, including revealing key pieces of information to would-be home owners of a property, including “negative” truths about the property – for example, divulging the entire history of the property, including any accidents or crimes that happened in the property.
Marketing industry: Ethical communications in the marketing industry can include revealing to clients that their business marketing applications are not optimal, and that a cheaper vendor, or a different form of marketing, will yield better results.

Virtually every industry can benefit from ethical communication principles, which always seeks to ensure that every enterprise member is able to present valuable pieces of information so that the best decisions can be made.

Ethical Communication In An Organization

In business organizations, communicating concisely, ethically, and appropriately are all necessary so a business can operate effectively and efficiently. Operating according to a communication-based code of ethics is important for both small and large scale person-to-person conversations. For larger audiences it is often important for business members to employ additional values to their communication principles, such as:

Choosing the right place/time: Speaking about a particular topic in a business often requires choosing the most pertinent and appropriate time and place in order for the message to be most effective. This requires knowing the recipients and having tact, along with utilizing strategy and planning.
Knowing one’s Audience: Certain audiences may prefer different verbiage or jargon, or may prefer one communication channel over another. Being an effective communicator means knowing your audience in order to communicate in the way that he/she will understand the best.

Business communication requires ethical values to form the foundation of all of its relationships, which ensures that all enterprise workflows, short term projects, and long term projects are effectively managed and carried out. Any lapse in efficient and ethical communication can result in misunderstandings, conflicts, delays with projects, and the creation of an ineffective working environment.

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Communication: Ethics

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Communication ethics assumes a distinctive perspective of bioethics, engaging it from two principal standpoints: biopolitics and post-human. These two perspectives yield a targeted standpoint on communication ethics. The notion of communication ethics does not suggest a uniform or universal assertion about what is and is not ethical. The term “communication ethics” is more aptly understood within (Gadamer, H. G. (1988). Truth and method . New York: The Crossroads Publishing Company. (Original work published 1975)) conception of “horizon” (p. 217). Theorized in visual terms, a horizon implies a series of images in the distance; the horizon is composed of multiplicity and fuzzy clarity. A horizon is akin to an impressionistic painting that invites a number of glimpses and perspectives, all temporal and partial. The question of bioethics from the vantage point of communication ethics does not dictate correct answers. The task is to open the conversation by unmasking unstated presuppositions. The first obligation of communication ethics is the act of understanding, not the conversion of the ignorant into correct ethical alignment. Communication ethics understood as content or a sense of the good furnishes moral gravity, simultaneously assuming the pragmatic reality of multiplicity. Distancing communicative ethics from universal truth counters imposition, bullying, and historical campaigns reminiscent of colonialism and totalitarianism in the name of self-righteous assurance.

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Works Cited

Article contents

Introduction

Brief History of the Discipline

General Characteristics: Heterogeneity, Interconnectivity, and Historicity

Integrity: Truth, Truthfulness, and Trust

Power: Justice, Normativity, and Force

Relation: Alterity and Compassion

Discussion of the Literature: Five Modes of Ethical Reasoning

Addendum: Some Key Themes of Communication Ethics

Further Reading

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2. Active Listening

3. Speak Non-Judgmentally

4. Speak From Your Own Experience

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