Scrupulosity: excessive concern with moral correctness

Overscrupulosity

Many people would argue that it is impossible to be overly ethical. The idea behind their thoughts may be that being ethical is a good thing, therefore it is impossible to be too ethical. However, being ethical can create some negative results for people, which are not always readily foreseeable. Ethics can complicate decision-making. Rather than simply making a decision based upon the results that are going to be in one's own best interests, ethics requires people to think about how their actions will impact others, and, after taking that impact into account. For the most part, making ethical determinations will help people engage in better decision-making. However, being overly ethical can actually lead to crippling stagnation, because all decisions are going to have some negative outcomes for some stakeholders; it is impossible to make a decision that has no downside for anyone. Therefore, every decision is going to involve some type of ethical conflict, and the person who is overly ethical will be unable to reconcile the idea of a greater good with a small harm, and become stagnant.

In fact, it is well-known that nice people are not as successful in business. Not only do disagreeable people tend to make more money, they are also likely to advance more rapidly in business (Marshall, 2011). In fact, people with fewer personal ethics are more likely to make money. This should come as no surprise. "They value money over ethics; in a choice between the successful and profitable thing and the kind and fair thing, they'll always choose the money. People who care about money, on balance, make more of it than those who don't. People who want power and value it over treating others with compassion will be more powerful, as a group" (Marshall, 2011). Not that all ethical decisions are driven by financial considerations, but in the business world, ethical dilemmas often come down to a determination of what has more value human beings or financial interests. The issue is complicated because decisions that are sound financial decisions do have direct benefits for at least some of the stakeholders.

However, personal ethics and business ethics are two distinct areas. "In the workplace, values must be realigned according to the objectives of the organization and the stakeholders who trust and depend on it" (Marshall, 2011). What is interesting is that professional and business ethics may come into conflict, and people with high personal ethics may actually find it more difficult to differentiate between things that violate their personal ethical norms and professional ethical standards. However, ethical rules for business scenarios are actually very precise, and they outline what a person can and cannot do in a wide variety of situations. Generally, they require a person to consider the best interests of a certain subset of stakeholders and to act according to those interests. However, ethical rules also bind people by other governing laws and regulations. For example, the recent scandal at Penn State has been considered, by many, to be an example of a lack of ethics. However, the failure to adequately report the suspected child sexual abuse had a positive outlook for the University's financial stakeholders and, therefore, from a purely business perspective, that behavior may have been considered overly ethical, rather than under-ethical. It is only by imposing outside ethical norms, including legal reporting guidelines, that one can see that it was an ethical disaster.