Making STC Ethical Guidelines Your Own
“And in your pursuit of the devil would you cut down every law? … And then when the devil turned on you, where would you hide, all the laws being flat?” — character of Sir Thomas Moore in A Man for All Seasons.
No ethics are of any use if they are filed away with your back issues of STC Journals gathering dust. To have meaning, you must gain a personal understanding of what the STC Guidelines mean to you, to your clients, to your family, and to your consulting practice.
In order to behave in a consistently ethical manner, you must come to understand that every act is an expression of your ethics. Many people seem to think that they can make different sections of their lives and make different rules for each section. That does not work well for most folks. The lucky ones get a second chance to knit their broken segments of their lives back together.
The subject of one ethic for one life always reminds me of an anecdote from a popular speaker on the university campuses, Michael Parenti. He relates how he visited an acupuncturist and asked him innocently, "How come when my head hurts you put a needle in my foot?" His acupuncturist looks with pity on this poor Occidental before him and with his best Oriental patience, he says: "Whole body connected, take a look." Well, whole life connected, too, take a look.
Organizing for Ethics
“I am honest because I understand no other way to be.” — St. Thomas Aquinas
Most people are much better at focusing down on the momentary problem at hand than at stepping back and taking in the whole of their life, their aspirations, and their plans. Look at any successful business person, and you will see this skill developed to a much greater extent than normal. What are the steps to business success?
- Make an objective.
- Identify achievable goals within that objective.
- Set a time table to achieve those objectives.
- Take stock at regular intervals.
- Revise your goals and your methods whenever they don't make sense.
- Reward yourself for success.
- Make provision against the future.
This process has a clear parallel in terms of defining your ethics and achieving high standards of ethical standards:
- Define what you want.
- Identify the moral and ethical consequences of your desires.
- Decide what you think is right and relate that to your needs.
- Review you actions at regular intervals.
- Reward yourself for doing what is right.
- Leave room for your own fallibility.
There are lots of people who are serious about success. Success is important to them. But success is more than making a ton of money. How you become successful has a lot to do with the effect that this success has upon you. The people who get the most happiness from their success are people who understand the importance of being serious about their ethics. Most people treat ethics as though it was something you need to take for granted, not a something that has to be developed and worked for and cherished.
Much of the blame for this is that there are so many basically good folks wandering about mouthing someone else's ethics without ever having really examined their own hearts. This is not a prescription for happiness.
Be careful what you ask for … you may get it.