- At an individual level:
- Credibility
- Confidence
- Social capital
- Happiness
- Decide your outlook towards society
- Elevate your sense of being
- Decision making
- At the organisational level:
- Brand quality
- Employee- Employer relationship
- Stakeholder relationship
- At the societal level:
- Absence of greed
- Cooperation and peace
- Equality and justice
- Sustainability
- Progressiveness
- Prescribe standards of right and wrong: As a discipline, ethics identifies what good or evil, just or unjust, fair or unfair practice, or what our moral duty is. It prescribes well-established standards that a person should follow concerning rights, obligations, fairness, and benefits to society. These standards put a reasonable obligation to stop unethical activities or crimes such as stealing, assault, rape, murder, fraud and so on.
- Improves thinking, perspective and judgements: Ethics provides us with a moral map, a framework that we can use to find our way through difficult issues. It helps a person to critically evaluate his/her actions, choices and decisions.
- It assists a person in knowing what he/she is and what is best for him/her. Thus, helping a person to decide what he/she should do to attain the best.
- Determines our actions or inaction: In the absence of ethics, human actions would be rendered random and aimless. Ethical standards help us to organise our goals and actions to accomplish a good and virtuous life and also larger good for society.
- Ethics is the basis of a healthy and peaceful society: Every institution designed for human good has some rules and regulations based on moral principles. Being ethical helps a person to admire and follow the rules. Ethics/morality provides a common point of view. The common point of view among people leads to an agreement among them. This way, ethics provides stability in society and other institutions.
- Ethics helps in making society better: It teaches us to treat everyone equally and respect each other’s rights; without ethical conduct, society would be a miserable place.
- Solving moral dilemmas: Many moral issues like abortion and euthanasia create ethical dilemmas. Ethics offer us rules and principles that enable us to take a clearer view of moral problems.
- Aids in exercising discretion: It provides a set of principles and helps to make clear choices in particular cases where neither social norms nor law can provide the answer or solution. It allows us to work on skills such as exercising discretion, so when we are faced with real situations that impact others, we are capable of taking a morally sound decision.
- Guide to both private and public life: Ethics is integral to both private and public life. In the personal sphere, ethics guide our relations with our fellow beings, and in professional life or public administration, ethics focuses on how one should act and reflect to act responsibly. For instance, adherence to ethical principles in business leads to rejecting the route that would lead to short-term profit over larger corporate social responsibility. Meanwhile, in political and social life, ethics decides how human life and institution must be organized to be moral.
- Ethics shows the way to self-realisation: Every individual desire to be good. Being ethical or moral helps a person to attain what is best for him. It deepens the reflection of the ultimate question of life and its purpose. Thus, ethics is fundamental to a satisfactory human life.
