Do you compartmentalize your ethics?

This week, in my Values & Ethics Management class, students addressed the challenge of keeping separate their family and work lives. Most students concluded that technology makes such a separation difficult and maybe even impossible. (The class is part of Kent State’s  Online PR Master’s.)

If you play in social media — as we all do — we put ourselves out there. We remove our masks. Oh, some of you may attempt to separate digital life from work life. But you know it’s not really possible. Our lives have way too many intersections.

One student’s essay articulated the need for consistency of work-life ethics — the need for authenticity. Because her work is “behind the wall,” I won’t share it here. But I will share with you my response to her — edited slightly for clarity.

Thanks in part to technology our work/home/personal lives continue to merge. This story, “Teachers Under the Morality Microscope,” drives home the point. Those who try to compartmentalize their lives and, in turn, their morality, are having a tough time. Of course, I read another story this week about people being fired (and others not being hired) over refusal to provide a Facebook passwords to their employers. Now that’s scary!

Your essay drives home a critical point: It’s becoming tougher and tougher to compartmentalize our lives and our ethics. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, since it reminds us of the need to be authentic 24/7. Since I became immersed in social media 7 years ago (as part of my academic research) I decided to put away the masks and the uniforms. What you see is what you get. It’s a bit outrageous at times, but it’s me.

Funny thing — people have responded positively to that persona — even the whole longhaired hippie thing! For me, it’s been liberating. But then again, I’m a tenured faculty member who can only be fired by an act of Congress! This, too, is liberating, since it allows me to do my job without those “masks.” And that makes me a more effective teacher and trustworthy friend. I hope.

For most of us, the moral threshold is defined in childhood, and ethics classes can’t do much to change that. How we apply that morality is what makes us trustworthy professionals, parents, friends, etc. And that’s worth talking about.

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