During the pandemic and after I retired from my judicial work at the Court of Queen’s Bench, I signed up for lots of webinars to keep in touch with the world. One of them advertised a lecture by Susan Liautaud, the author of The Power of Ethics. If you were one of the first fifty or hundred (I forget the number), you would receive a copy of her book. I was one of the lucky ones and shortly after the webinar, I received the book in the mail.
For anyone interested in ethics and how the world today creates big challenges when faced with ethical choices, read this book. The book talks about the barriers to good ethical decision making, using examples that we can remember from the news or that we can relate to because of our daily activities, like using Siri or Alexa in our homes. What particularly resonates with me is her use of frameworks to address ethical issues. One is in her chapter ‘Banished Binary’ where she proposes a framework to “avoid oversimplification of edgy questions into binary questions because it generates a nuanced set of considerations rather than ‘do it’ or ‘don’t do it’ options”. Another one is in her chapter on ethics on the fly. More about that in a bit.
When the National Judicial Institute designed its first course for judges on judicial ethics, we were advised that part of the value in teaching ethics is to give the judges a framework within which to analyze ethical problems. Usually, an ethical dilemma is exactly that – a problem where there are difficult choices and no easy or, sometimes, correct answers. We set about developing one. It needed adjusting as we road tested it with the judges, but I think it helped judges to slow down their analysis when faced with an ethical issue. The adjustments we made were to make the framework simpler. We found that the original framework had overlapping steps which made it harder for the judges not to jump to the end when they thought they had an answer. And that is why I found the frameworks in Dr. Liautaud’s book so inspiring.
I mentioned above the framework that she developed over apparently binary choices. But the one that helps us all is in her chapter ‘Ethics on the Fly’ for situations when we “need to make high-quality ethical decisions quickly…”. Her framework is straightforward and goes like this:
- Choose the two most important principles.
- Choose the two most important and irreparable consequences.
- Choose the two most important forces.
- Choose two alternatives.
Using this framework, Dr. Liautaud then goes through several questions which will sound familiar to many of us. Taking the car keys away from an elderly relative whose driving may be unsafe. Posting photos of children on social media. And more.
There is much more in the book. I expect to refer to it again. But for now, all I can say is this: Read this book.