Episode 849 Ethics Versus Morals
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining me on episode 849 of the inspired stewardship podcast.
[00:00:06] Myles Wakhem: [00:00:06] I'm Myles Wakehem. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time. Your talent, your treasure is to live out your calling. Having the ability to live an unconstrained life is key.
[00:00:20] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this. The inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer.
[00:00:29]Scott Maderer: [00:00:29] based on your cultural norms and your society norms. And that means if you're dealing with someone from a different society. Or from a different gender that was raised at a different family or in a different culture, they may have different norms. So it may not be that they did something wrong on purpose in your eyes.
[00:00:49] What is wrong. Instead, they did something that was very moral within their norms. Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcasts. [00:01:00] If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time. Your talent and your treasures for your true calling and the inspired stewardship podcast who will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.
[00:01:21]In today's episode about developing your influence through stewarding your talent. I talk with you about some of the key differences between ethics and morals. I share why knowing these differences matter. And I also share why we have to make both ethical and moral decisions each and every day. You've heard me talk about developing your talent and what are the best ways to do that is through books.
[00:01:45] But if you're like most people today, it's hard to find the time to read. And that's why today's podcast is brought to you by audible. Go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign up. And you can get a 30 [00:02:00] day free trial. There's over 180,000 titles to choose from, and you can pick one and listen your way to developing your talents via audible.
[00:02:11] That's inspired stewardship.com/audible. To get your free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast. Ethics and morals. A lot of times we use those too two words interchangeably. We treat them as if they're the same thing, but the reality is that ethics and morals are suddenly different ideas.
[00:02:36] And because of that, they have slightly different applications. Now this isn't a value statement. This is an ethics are good and morals are bad or morals are good or ethics are bad. Instead. I think it's important to recognize that you probably exist in a situation where you sometimes are applying one and sometimes the other to your decision-making, but I've often talked [00:03:00] about, I believe intentionality is an important part of success, and that includes being intentional and recognizing, when are you making an ethical decision?
[00:03:10] When are you making a moral decision? And does it matter thinking about it in other words? So let's talk a little bit about the difference. So when you look it up on the web and you look up, what is morals and what is ethics and what is the difference between them? You're going to find lists that basically boil down to a couple of different things.
[00:03:29] So morals are the beliefs of the individual or of the group about what is right or what is wrong while ethics are guiding principles, which help the individual or group make decisions about what is good or what is bad. Morals are general principles. They're set by the group. Usually they're set by the culture or the organization or something wider and bigger around you [00:04:00] where ethics tend to be responses to very specific situations.
[00:04:05] In other words, Morals, our customs and ethics are more about character, how you react because you could live in a situation where there's moral customs around you. But if you choose not to follow them or to follow them, that's more of an ethical decision. That's a decision about whether or not those worlds fit in this particular situation.
[00:04:29] Morals are social or cultural norms while ethics tend to be more individual legal and professional norms, morals are about principles of right and wrong and ethics are more focused on the context. So less absolute is more. Is this right or wrong with this particular conduct at this particular point in time?
[00:04:54] Ethics tend to be what we apply in things like a business decision-making while [00:05:00] morals may have more to do with your day to day. Decision-making. And more to do with just your personal life. Morals can be different in different societies and cultures, but ethics tend to be more uniform, maybe not perfectly uniform, but much more uniform in their belief.
[00:05:18] Morals are generally rules and absolute statements while ethics tend to have a little bit more abstraction to them. So because of that, There's some confusion and overlap, but there's also some degree to which you have to recognize what you're doing. So moral principles may be things like don't cheat, be loyal, be patient, always tell the truth, be generous.
[00:05:44] These sorts of things are moral decisions. While ethics tend to be phrased more as truthfulness. Honesty, loyalty, respect, fairness, integrity. In other words, they're the standards by which [00:06:00] you run or govern an organization or yourself. Morals and ethics are a little bit different in terms of how they're governed, because morals are governed more by the society and culture around you.
[00:06:13] While ethics are determined more by outside abstract concepts of character that we bring into ourselves. And they're both important because if somebody tries to do something and they abuse their power, And then they use their power and their position to save themselves. That would be immoral.
[00:06:37] And it would also be an ethical dilemma as well. Was it ethical to save somebody whenever they had committed a crime? Just because you had the power to do it. If you. Use your position to hire someone that's a close friend of yours instead of actually really openly interviewing that's an ethical decision to do that.
[00:06:59] It's [00:07:00] unethical in this case. So there's different ways that you can apply it to different situations. The important thing is recognizing, are you making this decision because you feel like it's good or bad or right or wrong in some sort of absolute a sense based on your culture, based on what's around you.
[00:07:21] If it is that it's you're making a moral decision. And again, that doesn't mean that's a bad decision, but recognize that it's based on your cultural norms and your society norms. And that means if you're dealing with someone from a different society or from a different gender that was raised at a different family or in a different culture, they may have different norms.
[00:07:42] So it may not be that they did something wrong on. Purpose in your eyes, what is wrong. Instead they did something that was very moral within their norms, but you view it as immoral because of your norms that can create conflict. But oftentimes if you can take the [00:08:00] discussion back a step. To an ethical position where you're talking about, do we both agree that honesty is important?
[00:08:06]Yes. Most people would agree that honesty is important. The differences, how does honesty play out day to day? What does that look like is a little white lie about somebody. Okay. Or not. That's more of a moral decision that can have differences based on your culture. And you make thousands of decisions in a week or month, a year that fall into this moral and ethical kind of positioning.
[00:08:34] And when you think about it, it's important to recognize that where you fall on these decisions matters because that's how your life plays out. So as you make a decision reflect, is this based on my morals and my cultural norms are, is it based on ethics that are more universally agreed upon? And if it is based on morals is have I clarified and made sure that we're operating from [00:09:00] the same basic premise and if not, then that's what the discussion needs to be about.
[00:09:05] But if you are, then you can recognize that the person was grown in the same cultural norm as you. And maybe it is actually that they're doing something immoral and often they would also be doing something unethical in that situation as well. Thanks for listening.
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