Different Ways of Specifying the Problem

• Many problems can be specified as disagreements. For example, you disagree with your supervisor over the safety of the manufacturing environment. Disagreements over facts can be resolved by gathering more information. Disagreements over concepts (you and your supervisor have different ideas of what safety means) require working toward a common definition.
• Other problems involve conflicting values. You advocate installing pollution control technology because you value environmental quality and safety. Your supervisor resists this course of action because she values maintaining a solid profit margin. This is a conflict between a moral value (safety and environmental quality) and a nonmoral value (solid profits). Moral values can also conflict with one another in a given situation. Using John Doe lawsuits to force Internet Service Providers to reveal the real identities of defamers certainly protects the privacy and reputations of potential targets of defamation. But it also places restrictions on legitimate free speech by making it possible for powerful wrongdoers to intimidate those who would publicize their wrongdoing. Here the moral values of privacy and free speech are in conflict. Value conflicts can be addressed by harmonizing the conflicting values, compromising on conflicting values by partially realizing them, or setting one value aside while realizing the other (=value trade offs).
• If you specify your problem as a disagreement, you need to describe the facts or concepts about which there is disagreement.
• If you specify your problem as a conflict, you need to describe the values that conflict in the situation.
• One useful way of specifying a problem is to carry out a stakeholder analysis. A stakeholder is any group or individual that has a vital interest at risk in the situation. Stakeholder interests frequently come into conflict and solving these conflicts requires developing strategies to reconcile and realize the conflicting stakes.
• Another way of identifying and specifying problems is to carry out a socio-technical analysis. Socio-technical systems (STS) embody values. Problems can be anticipated and prevented by specifying possible value conflicts. Integrating a new technology, procedure, or policy into a socio-technical system can create three kinds of problem. (1) Conflict between values in the technology and those in the STS. For example, when an attempt is made to integrate an information system into the STS of a small business, the values present in an information system can conflict with those in the socio-technical system. (Workers may feel that the new information system invades their privacy.) (2) Amplification of existing value conflicts in the STS. The introduction of a new technology may magnify an existing value conflict. Digitalizing textbooks may undermine copyrights because digital media is easy to copy and disseminate on the Internet. (3) Harmful consequences. Introducing something new into a socio-technical system may set in motion a chain of events that will eventually harm stakeholders in the socio-technical system. For example, giving laptop computers to public school students may produce long term environmental harm when careless disposal of spent laptops releases toxic materials into the environment.
• The following table helps summarize some of these problem categories and then outlines generic solutions.

Solution Testing: The solutions developed in the second stage must be tested in various ways.

1. Reversibility: Are they reversible between the agent and key stakeholders?
2. Harm/Beneficence: Do they minimize harm? Do they produce benefits that are justly distributed among stakeholders?
3. Public Identification: Are these actions with which I am willing to be publicly identified? Does these actions identify me as a moral person?
4. Value: Do these actions realize key moral values and instantiate moral virtues?
5. Code: A code test can be added that refers to a professional or occupational code of ethics. Do the solutions comply with the professional’s or practitioner's code of ethics?
6. The solution evaluation matrix presented just below provides a nice way of modeling and summarizing the process of solution testing.

Set up the test

1. Identify the agent (the person who is going to perform the action)
2. Describe the action or solution that is being tested (what the agent is going to do or perform)
3. Identify the stakeholders (those individuals or groups who are going to be affected by the action), and their stakes (interests, values, goods, rights, needs, etc.
4. Identify, sort out, and weigh the consequences (the results the action is likely to bring about)

Harm/Beneficence Test

• What harms would accompany the action under consideration? Would it produce physical or mental suffering, impose financial or non-financial costs, or deprive others of important or essential goods?
• What benefits would this action bring about? Would it increase safety, quality of life, health, security, or other goods both moral and non-moral?
• What is the magnitude of each these consequences? Magnitude includes likelihood it will occur (probability), the severity of its impact (minor or major harm) and the range of people affected.
• Identify one or two other viable alternatives and repeat these steps for them. Some of these may be modifications of the basic action that attempt to minimize some of the likely harms. These alternatives will establish a basis for assessing your alternative by comparing it with others.
• Decide on the basis of the test which alternative produces the best ratio of benefits to harms?
• Check for inequities in the distribution of harms and benefits. Do all the harms fall on one individual (or group)? Do all of the benefits fall on another? If harms and benefits are inequitably distributed, can they be redistributed? What is the impact of redistribution on the original solution imposed?

Pitfalls of the Harm/Beneficence Test

1. “Paralysis of Analysis" comes from considering too many consequences and not focusing only on those relevant to your decision.
2. Incomplete Analysis results from considering too few consequences. Often it indicates a failure of moral imagination which, in this case, is the ability to envision the consequences of each action alternative.
3. Failure to compare different alternatives can lead to a decision that is too limited and one-sided.
4. Failure to weigh harms against benefits occurs when decision makers lack the experience to make the qualitative comparisons required in ethical decision making.
5. Finally, justice failures result from ignoring the fairness of the distribution of harms and benefits. This leads to a solution which may maximize benefits and minimize harms but still give rise to serious injustices in the distribution of these benefits and harms.

Reversibility Test

1. Set up the test by (i) identifying the agent, (ii) describing the action, and (iii) identifying the stakeholders and their stakes.
2. Use the stakeholder analysis to identify the relations to be reversed.
3. Reverse roles between the agent (you) and each stakeholder: put them in your place (as the agent) and yourself in their place (as the one subjected to the action).
4. If you were in their place, would you still find the action acceptable?

Cross Checks for Reversibility Test (These questions help you to check if you have carried out the reversibility test properly.)

• Does the proposed action treat others with respect? (Does it recognize their autonomy or circumvent it?)
• Does the action violate the rights of others? (Examples of rights: free and informed consent, privacy, freedom of conscience, due process, property, freedom of expression)
• Would you recommend that this action become a universal rule?
• Are you, through your action, treating others merely as means?

Pitfalls of the Reversibility Test

• Leaving out a key stakeholder relation
• Failing to recognize and address conflicts between stakeholders and their conflicting stakes
• Confusing treating others with respect with capitulating to their demands (“Reversing with Hitler”)
• Failing to reach closure, i.e., an overall, global reversal assessment that takes into account all the stakeholders the agent has reversed with.

Steps in Applying the Public Identification Test

• Set up the analysis by identifying the agent, describing the action, and listing the key values or virtues at play in the situation.
• Association the action with the agent.
• Describe what the action says about the agent as a person. Does it reveal him or her as someone associated with a virtue or a vice?

Alternative Version of Public Identification

• Does the action under consideration realize justice or does it pose an excess or defect of justice?
• Does the action realize responsibility or pose an excess or defect of responsibility?
• Does the action realize reasonableness or pose too much or too little reasonableness?
• Does the action realize honesty or pose too much or too little honesty?
• Does the action realize integrity or pose too much or too little integrity?

Pitfalls of Public Identification

• Action not associated with agent. The most common pitfall is failure to associate the agent and the action. The action may have bad consequences and it may treat individuals with respect but these points are not as important in the context of this test as what they imply about the agent as a person who deliberately performs such an action.
• Failure to specify moral quality, virtue, or value. Another pitfall is to associate the action and agent but only ascribe a vague or ambiguous moral quality to the agent. To say, for example, that willfully harming the public is bad fails to zero in on precisely what moral quality this ascribes to the agent. Does it render him or her unjust, irresponsible, corrupt, dishonest, or unreasonable? The virtue list given above will help to specify this moral quality.

Code of Ethics Test

• Does the action hold paramount the health, safety, and welfare of the public, i.e., those affected by the action but not able to participate in its design or execution?
• Does the action maintain faithful agency with the client by not abusing trust, avoiding conflicts of interest, and maintaining confidences?
• Is the action consistent with the reputation, honor, dignity, and integrity of the profession?
• Does the action serve to maintain collegial relations with professional peers?

Meta Tests

• The ethics and feasibility tests will not always converge on the same solution. There is a complicated answer for why this is the case but the simple version is that the tests do not always agree on a given solution because each test (and the ethical theory it encapsulates) covers a different domain or dimension of the action situation. Meta tests turn this disadvantage to your advantage by feeding the interaction between the tests on a given solution back into the evaluation of that solution.
• When the ethics tests converge on a given solution, this convergence is a sign of the strength and robustness of the solution and counts in its favor.
• When a given solution responds well to one test but does poorly under another, this is a sign that the solution needs further development and revision. It is not a sign that one test is relevant while the others are not. Divergence between test results is a sign that the solution is weak.

Solution Implementation

1. This stage requires carrying out a Feasibility Test which identifies constraints that could interfere with realizing a solution. This test also sorts out constraints into resource (time, cost, materials), interest (individuals, organizations, legal, social, political), and technical limitations. By identifying situational constraints, problem-solvers can anticipate implementation problems and take early steps to prevent or mitigate them.
2. Time. Is there a deadline within which the solution has to be enacted? Is this deadline fixed or negotiable?
3. Financial. Are there cost constraints on implementing the ethical solution? Can these be extended by raising more funds? Can they be extended by cutting existing costs? Can agents negotiate for more money for implementation?
4. Technical. Technical limits constrain the ability to implement solutions. What, then, are the technical limitations to realizing and implementing the solution? Could these be moved back by modifying the solution or by adopting new technologies?
5. Manufacturability. Are there manufacturing constraints on the solution at hand? Given time, cost, and technical feasibility, what are the manufacturing limits to implementing the solution? Once again, are these limits fixed or flexible, rigid or negotiable?
6. Legal. How does the proposed solution stand with respect to existing laws, legal structures, and regulations? Does it create disposal problems addressed in existing regulations? Does it respond to and minimize the possibility of adverse legal action? Are there legal constraints that go against the ethical values embodied in the solution? Again, are these legal constraints fixed or negotiable?
7. Individual Interest Constraints. Individuals with conflicting interests may oppose the implementation of the solution. For example, an insecure supervisor may oppose the solution because he fears it will undermine his authority. Are these individual interest constraints fixed or negotiable?
8. Organizational. Inconsistencies between the solution and the formal or informal rules of an organization may give rise to implementation obstacles. Implementing the solution may require support of those higher up in the management hierarchy. The solution may conflict with organization rules, management structures, traditions, or financial objectives. Once again, are these constraints fixed or flexible?
9. Social, Cultural, or Political. The socio-technical system within which the solution is to be implemented contains certain social structures, cultural traditions, and political ideologies. How do these stand with respect to the solution? For example, does a climate of suspicion of high technology threaten to create political opposition to the solution? What kinds of social, cultural, or political problems could arise? Are these fixed or can they be altered through negotiation, education, or persuasion?