The Center for Ethics was pleased to host Tom Bell, a Culture and Ethics Consultant from the United Kingdom, for a virtual Ethics Lab with students at Saint Anselm College. The conversation focused on the ethics of willful blindness, along with the tension between building networks of trust at work while understanding the need to talk openly about ethical dilemmas seen in the workplace.
Tom talked to attendees about his family's experience with willful blindness in the workplace, as well as about his professional experience as a consultant deliberating ethical issues in the workplace and as an author detailing his stories about ethical failings in the National Health Service.
The lab began with Tom sharing his own story. His sister, Alison, experienced significant damage to her psyche because of a failing workplace environment within the National Health Service. After being released from the hospital, and having experienced trauma and abuse while admitted, Allison took her own life in 1991. Thus began a journey for Tom and his family to get answers and accountability. That journey is still ongoing.
Next, Tom presented the group with some questions to spark discussion. These included questions such as “Would you be willing to sacrifice your career and income [to do the right thing]?” and “Should public service organizations seek to be more like teams, or more like families?” The participants were then sent into breakout rooms to discuss whichever of these questions most leapt out at them. Participants discussed what their morals would demand of them. Many people felt a duty to report ethical infractions in the workplace, but also acknowledged the difficulty of putting your livelihood on the line in doing so.
We discussed other issues such as what pathways to take when reporting workplace infractions, and what to do about minor infractions that may otherwise be swept under the rug.
Thank you to Tom Bell for joining us and sharing his moving life story and initiating good conversation between students on an important topic.