Ethical Intuition

An excerpt from Chad’s book “Thinking Aloud” which discusses another aspect of The Elements of Moral Action. We hope you enjoy the essay – and perhaps introduce the questions below as a way to start conversations with your teammates. – ELA Team

See a list of other posts in this series at Blog Post Series

Ethical Intuition

The tension between intuition and analysis can become a serious problem for leaders when either is misapplied, or when we aren’t able to bring both to bear to the greatest extent possible.

When do we just know?  This question recently arose in a meeting with a client’s board of directors, presenting an organizational strategy developed with management and staff.  Our recommendations were well-received, and I think well-understood.  As we began to discuss implications for the strategy on project priorities, one member interrupted me.  “This is way too analytical,” he said.  “I know a good project when I see one.”  He perceived a conflict and attributed it, interestingly, to “a clash of Myers-Briggs Types.[1]”  When someone asked him to say more, he observed that trying to create matrices to make decisions seems at odds with intuition, with gut feel.  He then went on to clarify that he wasn’t denigrating intuition or analysis, just putting on the table his personal orientation toward intuition and against analysis.  The grids I presented seemed meaningless to him, and so he was essentially recusing himself from the discussion at hand.

That might have been the only time that anyone has ever suggested that I was too analytical.   I rely heavily on intuition as a critical faculty and as a critical factor in business success.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a great book, entitled Blink, on the subject of intuition and the phenomenon of “just knowing.”  In it, he considers the power of intuition, and its limitations: when we ought to trust gut feel, and when we ought not.  Among his key points is a strong argument that we can trust our intuitions in areas where we are genuinely experienced and knowledgeable.[2]

The tension between intuition and analysis is particularly acute where ethical decisions are concerned.  Most of us have a gut feel for when something is wrong.  It is easy to conclude that unethical conduct arises from ignoring our guts.  There are real problems with that view of ethical reasoning, however.  First, our guts – our intuitions – register a lot of inputs at once.  We feel a sense of duty toward shareholders, empathy for and commitment to employees, a strong desire to please customers, etc.  Second, fear can cloud moral intuition, particularly when we perceive that our livelihoods or our families’ finances are at stake.  So can many other emotions or circumstances that we might or might not perceive.

On the other hand, we may be able to trust our intuitions, at least to some degree, as an initial indicator of a potential problem.  We may have very good gut feel for identifying when obligations or commitments are potentially in conflict, for example.  We may know when something might be wrong or when something is profoundly, inexorably, undeniably wrong.  However, different people have different sensitivities, different thresholds of concern, and different priorities.  Individual moral intuitions are sure to vary.  So, even under the best of circumstances, our ethical judgments can’t be based on gut feel alone.

Analysis has its limitations as well.  We come to work with different values and moral orientations.  Of course, a strong set of organizational values can provide a good framework for discussion.  Agreed-upon organizational values are a critical, perhaps necessary, but certainly insufficient basis for ethical deliberation within an organization.  Even with a common framework for discussion, too many people who are adept at business analysis are unwilling or unable to engage in ethical analysis.  Agreeing on common premises – then arguing through their implications to a common conclusion – is challenging.  Like any skill, it takes practice.  A good first step is recognizing that ethical deliberation and analysis do in fact require skill and practice.

By the same token, it is very often gut feel or intuition that alerts us to a potential problem.  We ignore those intuitions at our peril.  In fact, leaders should create environments where people are encouraged to speak up when they perceive a problem, and where there are processes for examining and evaluating those perceptions.

There is no single answer, no easy resolution to the tension between moral intuition and ethical reasoning or analysis.  Instead, we can avoid the problems associated with that tension by first understanding the power and limits of our intuition, and then developing skills and language that enable us to communicate and evaluate ethical concerns as capably as we analyze business opportunities.  Finally, we need to continue to develop shared values, frameworks, and skills for ethical deliberation within our organizations.

Conversation Starters:

Effective decision-making is a critical skill, to be developed over a lifetime.  In areas where we are genuinely knowledgeable and experienced, sometimes we can trust our intuition first and foremost.

• What kinds of decisions do you make analytically? When do you tend to act primarily from intuition?
• Can you use both, confirming intuition with further analysis, or taking a step back from deep deliberation to “check your gut” on a key decision?
• How effectively can you engage with those whose styles differ from your own?

[1] The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)  is a model for understanding personal differences that has achieved extraordinarily wide application in workplaces and even in the public consciousness.  You may have participated in or overheard conversations about people’s “Myers-Briggs Types,” represented by four-letter categories based on the work of Carl Jung, interpreted by Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother, Katharine Briggs.  I remain very cautious about efforts to describe people in terms of simple attributes, but respect that many people find meaning and insight in such systems.  For more on MBTI, see www.myersbriggs.org.

[2] That may seem obvious, but the importance of it became clear to me when I reflected on the breadth of topics about which I have “gut feel,” and the narrower subset of areas about which I actually know something.  Blink is a quick, lively read, and I highly recommend it.

At Ethical Leaders in Action we believe that most, if not all people, can develop themselves to play leadership roles in many different spheres both large and small. The foundation of this development process is a short but powerful list of virtues which can be developed and improved through conscious effort. For more information feel free to take the Virtues of Ethical Leadership Self Inventory (VELSI) which breaks these virtues down into features that can be individually developed. The results of the VELSI come with a quick reference guide to help you understand how the virtues and their individual features fit together. https://ethinact.com/velsi/

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