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Disclaimer: Information contained in pages and
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Solving actual business or medical ethics problems involving individual and
usually widely varied situations takes training. Corporate employees need to
solve problems (real or created for training) a few times with the assistance of
a skilled ethics leader before
you can expect employees to use the training effectively as a part of their job performance.
| Clinical Pragmatism is
a method of uncovering the right thing to do in the context of real-time
problem solving. |
One good method of solving business ethics problems in the clinical setting is called Clinical Pragmatism. Clinical Pragmatism is a
method inspired by John Dewey, Joseph Fins, Matthew Bacchetta, and Franklin
Miller. The term is used by others. The following is an outline of Bucklin's personal adaptation of the
method. The outline may be helpful to you in working on your own ethical
problem. However, additional guidance by a neutral ethics counselor is usually helpful
to solving your ethics problems, because:
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training in ethics helps identify the relevant facts. |
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a person outside the problem often sees facts that are
otherwise overlooked |
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when people talking about an ethics problem, discussion usually needs a
wise counselor to keep the discussion from bogging down on one or two items. |
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when the decision is made, it is comforting to know that it
has been looked at by someone whose job it is to know ethics principles. |
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when the decision is imparted to those affected and the wider
community that needs to know the result, then it is helpful to have the
backing of experienced ethics counsel, who may even help frame the
announcements to the parties involved and to the public. |
Clinical Pragmatism (CP) is a method of ethical decision making
in the real-world setting. It involves:
| assessment of facts, with |
| ethical analysis and discussion of relevant moral considerations to lead to a consensus formulation of an acceptable plan of action
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| providing the rationalization to be given others to describe why the
action to be taken is consistent with morality. |
In short, CP is a method of uncovering the right thing to do in
the context of real-time problem solving.
Ethics committees provide guidance with the goal of
reaching an ethically acceptable consensus. An ethics committee provides
guidance, but cannot guarantee the "right" decision. In reaching an ethically
acceptable consensus: all concerned parties are entitled to be heard and to work
together to arrive at a mutual satisfactory resolution if possible. An
ethics clinician facilitates and guides the process of inquiry without dictating
or engineering the outcome.
The Clinical Pragmatism Method can be divided into the following
steps.
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INQUIRY |
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DISCUSSION |
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DECISION |
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JUSTIFICATION |
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EVALUATION |
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These five steps are more fully described on the following page.
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