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Monday, October 22, 2012

Self-Reflection in Ethical Choice Making

Balancing Values Through the Looking Glass
By Allison Bashe
The Ethical Professor Blog
Originally published October 21, 2012

Self-reflection may be the most critical ingredient to making good ethical choices.  As professors, we need to highlight the importance of self-reflection in our undergraduate and graduate ethics courses.  We can do this through assignments that encourage self-reflection and emphasize to students the importance of self-reflection throughout their professional careers.  More importantly, we can highlight the importance of self-reflection by engaging in it on a regular basis and modeling this practice to our students.

At the 17th Annual Ethics Educators Conference in Harrisburg, PA, professionals reflected on their core values and then discussed how these values might be compatible with or might conflict with the profession of psychology.  Although generally the professionals in the room could appreciate the value of self-reflection, one person acknowledged that he initially felt oppositional toward an exercise that required him to consider how his values might conflict with our profession.  He commented that if our values conflict with our profession, it might indicate that we have not worked hard enough yet.  And that’s exactly the point:  Self-reflection helps us sharpen our focus to make better decisions.

The entire blog post is here.

The video can be found here.