The Question Of Ethics

"How ethical are you ?" ..This is a question which quite a few people have asked me after coming here..Infact almost every mock interview / committee interview at IIMK had this question..

Long back during my schooling and early college life, I considered smoking & drinking as totally wrong and unethical ... I no longer hold that perspective.. I still dont smoke( but I do take couple of pegs :) ) ... The way I look at people have undergone a sea change.. Similarly, I considered abstaining from seeing pornographic movies as an ethical way of life..but thankfully or otherwise, those myths got busted early in NITC life itself :-) ...similarly many more stuff...

If you have are caught in a situation where in you have to tell a lie to defend a promise,what would you do ? Most of us would tell the lie so that the promise holds... This might seem trivial, but few years back i was in such a situation which resulted in a big change in my life... Now when I look back to that episode, I think I would have handled it in a more mature way..Maybe declining to answer the question, or even managing my way out of the situation..

I still see pirated movies, I still use pirated software... So,that way, I'm not ethical. In IIMK, a significant ethical conflict that I've felt till now was over free-riding ( i.e, in a project group , you just relax, let others do the task ) .. No matter however talented you are, the pressures in a B-school makes you freeride in one project or the other regularly..

The values that an individual subscribes to undergoes lot of changes as he/she progresses in life..But then,there are some core values that remain more or less same... Its not easy to enumerate those core values... maybe a sense of equity,consideration for common good,being true to oneself etc... Over those, I still feel I'm the same .

Ajith