Prudence as a Goal of Ethics Training

Now that the holidays are almost over, I’ve turned my attention to my upcoming graduate ethics course. Teaching ethics, and learning to think and behave ethically (yes, this can all be done!), is always a set of balancing acts. Today I want to talk about the virtue of prudence, a virtue I'd like my students to learn.

The dictionary defines prudence in a couple ways that fit the skills that my students strive to develop:

• “the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason”
• “caution or circumspection as to danger or risk”

When professionals are acting with the right amount of prudence (versus not enough) they avoid the vice of rashness or recklessness. They can consider alternative courses of action and utilize the principles, ethics codes, and other guides that help them choose wisely. When they face ethical dilemmas, conflicts, or situations — and virtually all choices we make as professionals have ethical dimensions — professionals and students benefit from taking a little extra time to exercise prudence (Kahneman, 2011).

Like any virtue, however, students can develop too much prudence, which leads to indecision, or what I call ethical paralysis. In our course, we run the risk of feeling like every choice we make is so fraught with dangers that we dare not do anything lest we fall into an ethical trap.

To achieve what Aristotle called the golden mean — the right amount — of prudence, students need to undergo a cognitive shift from absolutist to more relativistic thinking (Perry, 1968). Here’s what I mean: at the beginning of the course, many students are looking for THE “right answer” to ethical dilemmas. Ethical paralysis ensues, however, when students move from “there’s one right answer” all the way to, “because there is no right answer, all answers are equally good (bad), and equally dangerous.” By the end, however, most students have gotten the idea that good ethical choices often include a range of right answers, and that there are ways of finding out and judging which choices are better.

I attempt to help my students slow down their choice-making process, and avoid ethical paralysis, by learning and practicing a range of skills, including self-reflecting, looking at their own ethical backgrounds (Bashe et al., 2007), using models of ethical choice making (Cottone, 2012, Knapp, VandeCreek, & Fingerhut, 2017), and others. Such skills allow students to develop and apply their technical skills (psychotherapy, assessment, research, etc.) with optimal levels of caution, confidence, care, competence, and probably a whole lot of other words that begin with c.

I read about a survey of MBA students (Aspen Institute Center for Business Education, 2008), which found that “the further [students] progress through their MBA program the less confident they feel that their business school training is preparing them to manage [ethical] conflicts.” At first blush, this sounds like a bad result. It implies that MBA programs may not be teaching their students well enough. However, students’ dissatisfaction with their programs might also indicate that they are making the cognitive shifts necessary to develop prudence. Students may understand that right answers in ethical conflicts are complex and take effort to make, while they still believe (at least a little) that there are “right” answers their programs have not (yet) taught them. What these students may still be working on is an appreciation for — and enough practice at — the skills necessary for good ethical choice making. If they recognize their lack of skill, they may also be developing the virtue of humility—which is a topic we can discuss in the New Year!