In keeping with the conference invitation to explore characteristics and capacities that make us human, I invite
colleagues to examine whether the learning objectives we set for our classes engage the full range of human
capacities, the processes, standards, and skills, that students need to understand and do ethics effectively. I
will introduce the key competencies listed below and the human capacities they empower, and then ask those
who attend to critique my list and provide their own. The focus will be on why or why not, and how to add
learning objectives to the generally accepted objective of “Improving moral reasoning.”

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Learning Objectives or Competencies for an Applied Ethics Course

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Assumption: The students can already do ethics. They have been since they were children. An applied ethics
course should give them ideas and terminology to recognize and understand their own experience of doing
ethics to strengthen their existing competencies and learn new ones, so that they can be more effectively
ethical.

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General Ethics Competencies:

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Have a brief, ordinary language explanation of what ethics is and why it matters.

“Ethics is a set of ideas and feelings that guide and constrain my actions and my expectations of others in ways
that allow us to live together in complex societies and flourish”

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Identify their own ethics processes and standards and have skills to recognize and use those processes and
standards effectively.

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Speak an ethics language based on ideas and terminology that fits comfortably into their reflective thinking,
and into conversations so they can speak with and not at others they live and work with.​

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Examples: Recognize an Ethics Issue, Be the Judge, Trust my Gut and Verify, Use my Head and Be Aware of Its
Limits, Engage the Crowd and Choose it Carefully, Watch for Reaction to threats and criticism and Don’t Cause
It in Others, Decide How to Act, Check my Narrative, Choose Tactics to Succeed, Act, and Look Back to Confirm
or Revise my Processes and Standards for future situations.

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Listen to others to identify their ethics processes and standards so they can confirm and clarify ethical
agreement, and resolve disagreements based on their and the others’ standards and processes.

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Example: Clues to identify another’s Trust my Gut judgment as a cause of our disagreement include that they
are certain about their judgment but don’t give any reason for it; they point to different pattern/emotion
triggers or different specific content for the trigger than I see; and/or they exhibit a strong emotion that is
commonly sparked as part of a gut judgment.

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Specific Ethics Competencies

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Identify ethics issues and explain why they are ethics issues.

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Use the definition of ethics as enabling us to live successfully in complex societies.
Use ethics standards for Gut judgments, Use my Head, and Engage the Crowd judgments as checklists.

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Use the ethics processes and standards to make ethics judgments in situations they face.

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Trust their Gut using pattern/emotion triggers and Verify those quick/automatic ethics judgments.
Use their Head to make slow/deliberate ethics judgments using commonly accepted ethics tests.
Consciously or unconsciously Engage the Crowd of people they respect and choose carefully.
Be aware of Reaction to threats and criticism and don’t cause it in others.

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Verify their ethics judgments based on the processes and standards they used.

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Verify those quick/automatic ethics judgments by asking whether patterns should be widened or switched and
if emotion is appropriate.
Be aware of the limits of reasoning and the strengths and weaknesses of each individual ethics test.
Distinguish the Crowd I choose because of respect and the Crowd Around Me and be aware of the strengths
and weaknesses of crowds.
Know that the standard for Reaction judgments is not what’s ethical but whatever works to protect from
threats or criticism.

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Decide how to act based on who they are and want to be.

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Use my Life Narrative and the Mirror Test to see if they are the kind of person who will do what is ethical in
the situation.

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Choose tactics to succeed at overcoming situational or organizational barriers.

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Use checklists of tactics that are known to improve the possibility of being able to speak up and act ethically.

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Confirm or revise their processes and standards based on the outcomes of their actions.

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Use the Dr. Phil test of “So how’s that working for you?”

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Explain how ethics is both absolute and relative, why ethics is dynamic and open to disagreement, and why
ethics has the authority to guide and constrain behavior.

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These objectives recognize quick/automatic processes as well as slow/deliberate ones like reasoning.
Identifying and managing both kinds is important to ethical effectiveness.

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Assumption: To increase the impact of the competencies, It is important to engage the student to use them
by prominently posting the ones advanced by each lesson before and after it, and to ask at the end of the lesson why each competency is important (what does it accomplish?), whether they want to gain that competency, and whether the lesson advanced their ability to do that competency.

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