Vanessa Pigrum - critical decision making and your own sense of ethics
Critical decision making and your own sense of ethics
Vanessa Pigrum | Monash Life | 6 minute read
Ethics underpin some of our most important societal and personal decisions, and, as Vanessa Pigrum explains, an understanding of them is invaluable for our times.
There’s a well-known philosophical exercise that participants at Cranlana Centre for Ethical Leadership are asked to consider. It involves a tram approaching a fork in the tracks.
If you allow the tram to continue on its predetermined path, it will hit and kill five workers on the track. If you divert the tram to the other track, it will kill just one person in its path. What do you do?
Cranlana CEO Vanessa Pigrum says people inevitably choose the path of least destruction and divert the tram. But then the scenario gets trickier. What if the one person is pregnant, and the five workers are actually escaped prisoners? It’s at this point, says Pigrum, the ethical dilemma begins to bite.
The tram conundrum, or ‘trolley problem’, is used to demonstrate that decisions aren’t always straightforward. As the scenario gets more complex and answers regarding the ‘right thing to do’ become murkier, participants must look inside themselves and challenge the foundations on which they make decisions – essentially, examining their ethical framework.
It’s not meant to be easy, says Pigrum. “Like all ethical dilemmas, there is no clear pathway through, and you really have to wrestle with ideas to make your decision.”
COVID-19 has thrust ethical decision-making into the spotlight as leaders grapple with how to deal with the pandemic... "Every headline has essentially been about an ethical choice.”
In early 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, this hypothetical question of who to save jumped off the page and into reality. “In Italy, when the situation seemed to be spiralling out of control, doctors were having to decide on the spot, under pressure, who gets a ventilator and who doesn't,” she says.
Having the ability to make such difficult decisions quickly, effectively and with consistency under pressure is why the study of ethics in leadership is so important. “If you do this work understanding your own sense of ethics – whether it’s about justice and fairness, equity, or hard-and-fast rules – then you can rely on it, rather than discovering it during a crisis.”
Right time
COVID-19 has thrust ethical decision-making into the spotlight as leaders grapple with how to deal with the pandemic. From weighing up privacy versus the common good when introducing tracking apps, to balancing the interests of the economy and health when looking at lockdowns, to deciding who lives and who dies, ethical challenges just keep coming, Pigrum says. “Every headline has essentially been about an ethical choice.”
So while Cranlana had to pivot “like the rest of the world”, replacing its renowned face-to-face programs with “bite-sized” 90-minute online forums, its lessons in sharpening ethical thinking have never been more pertinent.
