Ethics Report

Personal
 Integrity
Integrity is the practice of being honest and showing a consistent and uncompromising
adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values. In ethics, integrity is
regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one's actions.
 Objectivity
Objectivity is a philosophical concept of being true independently from individual
subjectivity caused by perception, emotions, or imagination. A proposition is considered
to have objective truth when its truth conditions are met without bias caused by a
sentient subject.
 Honesty
Honesty is a facet of moral character that connotes positive and virtuous attributes such
as integrity, truthfulness, straightforwardness, including straightforwardness of conduct,
along with the absence of lying, cheating, theft, etc. Honesty also involves being
trustworthy, loyal, fair, and sincere.

Professional
 Professional competence and due care
To maintain professional knowledge and skill at the level required to ensure that clients
or employers receive competent professional service; and. To act diligently in
accordance with applicable technical and professional standards when providing
professional services.
 Confidentiality
Confidentiality is the protection of personal information. Confidentiality means keeping
a client's information between you and the client, and not telling others including co-
workers, friends, family, etc. Examples of maintaining confidentiality include: individual
files are locked and secured.
 Professional behavior
Professional Behaviour. Professionalism is a way of conducting oneself that includes:
Respect for others: Courtesy and respect for others are fundamental elements of
professional behaviour.

Employee compensation is often one of the biggest expenses that small businesses face, but
motivated, productive employees can be the difference between success and failure. Some
employers choose to offer extra financial rewards to employees, such as bonuses and
commissions, to motivate workers to be more productive. Despite the potential to increase
productivity, performance-based incentives can have negative effects on businesses.

Inconsistency

One drawback of motivating employees with financial rewards like bonuses and commissions is that
such rewards are often inconsistent. For example, if a small business has a profitable year, it might be
able to reward all of its workers with large annual bonuses. If the company performs poorly the next
year, it might not have enough money to pay bonuses, even if employees worked just as hard. If
employees receive smaller rewards than they expect or than they had received in the past, it may hurt
morale.

Teamwork

Teamwork is vital to productivity in many business. A team of workers can often get more done together
than the individuals of the team would be able to accomplish alone. Financial incentives like bonuses
can inhibit teamwork because they often reward individual achievement rather than group
achievement, which can cause competition and divisiveness. For instance, many companies give out
bonuses based on the amount of work an individual performs during the year. This type of bonus
structure gives workers incentive to hoard work rather than passing protects on to colleagues and
collaborating.

To start with, one person is very critical of colleagues' ideas. You suspect that her fault-finding is
discouraging others from speaking up. Another has hardly contributed to the sessions at all: when asked
for his opinion, he simply agrees with a more dominant colleague. Finally, one group member makes
humorous comments at unhelpful times, which upsets the momentum of the discussion.

These are classic examples of poor group dynamics, and they can undermine the success of a project, as
well as people's morale and engagement.
Group leaders and team members can contribute to a negative group dynamic. Let's look at some of the
most common problems that can occur:
 Weak leadership: when a team lacks a strong leader, a more dominant member of the group can
often take charge. This can lead to a lack of direction, infighting, or a focus on the wrong
priorities.
 Excessive deference to authority: this can happen when people want to be seen to agree with a
leader, and therefore hold back from expressing their own opinions.
 Blocking: this happens when team members behave in a way that disrupts the flow of
information in the group. People can adopt blocking roles such as:
o The aggressor: this person often disagrees with others, or is inappropriately outspoken.
o The negator: this group member is often critical of others' ideas.
o The withdrawer: this person doesn't participate in the discussion.
o The recognition seeker: this group member is boastful, or dominates the session.
o The joker: this person introduces humor at inappropriate times.
 Groupthink : this happens when people place a desire for consensus above their desire to reach
the right decision. This prevents people from fully exploring alternative solutions.
 Free riding: here, some group members take it easy, and leave their colleagues to do all the
work. Free riders may work hard on their own, but limit their contributions in group situations;
this is known as "social loafing."
 Evaluation apprehension: team members' perceptions can also create a negative group
dynamic. Evaluation apprehension happens when people feel that they are being judged
excessively harshly by other group members, and they hold back their opinions as a result.
Strategies for Improving Team Dynamic

Know Your Team

As a leader, you need to guide the development of your group. So, start by learning about the
phases that a group goes through as it develops. When you understand these, you'll be able to preempt
problems that could arise, including issues with poor group dynamics.
Next, use Benne and Sheats' Group Roles to identify positive and negative group roles, and to
understand how they could affect the group as a whole. This will also help you plan how to deal with
potential problems.

Tackle Problems Quickly

If you notice that one member of your team has adopted a behavior that's affecting the group
unhelpfully, act quickly to challenge it.
Provide feedback that shows your team member the impact of her actions, and encourage her to reflect
on how she can change her behavior.

Define Roles and Responsibilities

Teams that lack focus or direction can quickly develop poor dynamics, as people struggle to understand
their role in the group.
Create a team charter – defining the group's mission and objective, and everyone's responsibilities – as
soon as you form the team. Make sure that everyone has a copy of the document, and remind people of
it regularly.

Analysis of how psychological tendencies and decision-making biases can prevent employees
from perceiving ethical issues in decision-making
Perfectionism

1. A large barrier at the implementation stage of the ethical problem solving process is the
counsellor’s fear of not making a good decision.
2. A counsellor may become over concerned with ‘doing the right thing’, so much so that they are
unable to put the decision into practice. Coleman (n.d) proposes that counsellors acknowledge
that there is rarely one ‘right’ choice and to look beyond self.
Fear of Criticism/Scrutiny

1. No one likes to be criticised and counsellors are no different.

2. It is however, inevitable that the decision taken will not be popular with all.
3. To overcome the fear, a counsellor needs to accept that the choice they have made is the
correct one for the situation and that not everyone will be pleased.
High Affiliative Needs

1. This barrier often accompanies perfectionism.

2. Many counsellors have a need to be liked and ethical decisions may not always be popular.
 3. This need can leave the counsellor open to manipulation.
4. Personal awareness can help the counsellor overcome this barrier.
Personal and/or Professional Immaturity

1. Coleman (n.d) identifies immaturity as acting impulsively without any conviction.

2. Immaturity involves acting on and implementing decisions that satisfy the counsellor first, often
without any consideration to the client.
3. The use of an ethical problem solving model can assist in conquering this barrier.

The differences between ethical conduct and compliant or legal conduct.

The major differences between law and ethics are mentioned below:
1. The law is defined as the systematic body of rules that governs the whole society and the
actions of its individual members. Ethics means the science of a standard human conduct.
2. The law consists of a set of rules and regulations, whereas Ethics comprises of guidelines and
principles that inform people about how to live or how to behave in a particular situation.
3. The law is created by the Government, which may be local, regional, national or international.
On the other hand, ethics are governed by an individual, legal or professional norms, i.e.
workplace ethics, environmental ethics and so on.
4. The law is expressed in the constitution in a written form. As opposed to ethics, it cannot be
found in writing form.
5. The breach of law may result in punishment or penalty, or both which is not in the case of
breach of ethics.
6. The objective of the law is to maintain social order and peace within the nation and protection
to all the citizens. Unlike, ethics that are the code of conduct that helps a person to decide what
is right or wrong and how to act.
7. The law creates a legal binding, but ethics has no such binding on the people.