What does it mean to be ethical? Ethics is derived from the Greek word ethos. Ethics to me can be defined as always doing the right thing all the time. Everyone has their own moral principles that decide his/her behavior. Everyone is completely different in how they were raised and taught in what was right and wrong. As stated by Santa Clara University, “ethics refers to standards of behavior that tell us how human beings ought to act in the many situations in which they find themselves-as friends, parents, children, citizens, businesspeople, teachers, professionals, and so on” (Santa Clara University, 2010). A lot of people will get ethics confused with it being the same as their feelings. In fact, it is totally opposite. It is that way because when people generally get angry with something or someone and then they will typically follow that up with doing something bad. There are certain ethics people should follow in their everyday lives. Whether you know it or not but if you drive every day and you choose to drive the speed limit, not to commit murder or even not to rob a bank you are following the rules and regulations that were implemented by our government. I know from a personal level about doing the right thing and being ethical when one of my friends was working a bakery. My friend left that job and took the recipe and started making her own cookies and went out on the street and sold them cookies to the bakery’s current customers and future customers. Not to mention this was the bakery’s best cookie that was voted on by its customers. Pretty soon the owner realized his sales were going down and quickly realized that it was his former employee selling his product without the benefit. He eventually filed a lawsuit against my friend. Now what my friend did was not only fair and right but was also considered unethical. My friend had pay a fee back to her former boss and had to give up the recipe
References: Legal Information Institute. (1992). Retrieved September 9, 2012, from Cornell University Law School: http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/ethics Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (2005, December 20). Retrieved September 9, 2012, from Personal Identity and Ethics: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-ethics/ Santa Clara University. (2010). A Framework for Thinking Critically. Retrieved September 8, 2012, from http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/framework.html