Describe a situation where you recently made an ethical decision you believed was right but somebody else might consider wrong. What factor convinced you to do the right thing? Was it an ethical choice? (It may not have been…. You find someone’s property and return it for a reward).
Recently, I was staying over at a friend’s house and we decided to go out to the mall to watch a movie at the cinema. Once the movie had finished, on the way out, I had realized that the person who was seated in front of us had dropped his phone. At first, I was thinking of just keeping the phone because there was no passcode for it, and it was in a really good condition. In addition to this, beside me, I had my friend who was telling me that I should either sell the phone or return it for a reward. However, after thinking beyond my self-interest, and understanding how the person might feel after realizing that he had lost his phone, and also the potential consequences of stealing, I had decided to return the phone to a lost and found service at the mall.
This incident is an example of a recent situation whereby I had made an ethical decision. Although somebody else might consider my decision to be wrong, such as my friend, who believed that I should be rewarded for the lost mobile phone, I believed that I did the right thing by returning something that did not belong to me. The primary factors that convinced me to do the right thing were my emotions, reason and logic, family and religion. From my personal experience in the past, whereby I had lost my phone, I was able to go beyond my emotional state of self-interest, and further empathize with the person who had lost his phone. In addition, through my reasoning and logic I was able to assess some of the potential consequences of stealing and make the ethically correct decision. However, the key factors that almost always convince me to do the right thing are the ethical values that I have learned from both my parents and my religion, which oftentimes guide some of my actions and behaviors.
Ian Barton's Theory of Knowledge 