The Role of an Ethical Counselor

Mentors have skills to help people conduct educational conversations about difficult issues, and they also understand the psychology of ethics - how we make choices in accordance with our values. They also usually have a huge store of personal wisdom.

Ethical leadership helps others make better business decisions that affect the well-being of our employees and patients.

Mentors provide relevant, and effective guidance to enable people to:

• Create an environment for open dialogue
• Understand and work with the ethical dilemma
• Studying and questioning your own values
• Recognize and challenge groupthink and faulty logic
• Make the hard choice
• Have difficult conversations with other people
• Enhance their moral conscience and moral competence

This role has three parts:

1. Supporting anyone in the organization with an ethical dilemma

Helping to figure out how to deal with it. This process involves helping:

• Explaining the problem
• Remembering the context
• Considering the consequences
• Which other opinions/views might be relevant?
• Balancing arguments
• Making a final check

2. Helping people develop moral stamina

The ability to recognize ethical dilemmas, raise ethical awareness and address ethical issues in accordance with your personal values and those of your organization. This is usually a long learning curve compared to the first one.

3. Acting as the conscience of the company
   They are able to identify patterns of thought and behavior that increase ethical risk and alert management to these patterns so that action can be taken.

Advantages

By using mentoring as a powerful leadership development tool, leaders can address ethical dilemmas by:

• Defining an ethical issue
• Design and implement a process for evaluating options
• Analyze decisions against the backdrop of regulatory policies and, if necessary, upgrade them.
• Influence the ethical culture of their organizations by becoming more authentic and valuable leaders.