24 – The Consciously Ethical Principle

[00:00:00] Santiago: Hi, and welcome to the IDEMS Principle. I am Santiago Borio, an Impact Activation Fellow. And I’m here with David Stern, founding director of IDEMS.

Hi, David.

[00:00:18] David: Hi, Santiago. Another principle? Which one are we doing?

[00:00:23] Santiago: We’re doing one that when I read the principles for the first time, I thought this is obvious. Why do we need to highlight? But then I think reading it and thinking about it made it a bit less obvious. And I’d like to question you on it. It’s Consciously Ethical.

[00:00:41] David: Yeah.

[00:00:42] Santiago: And the way we describe it is: “This principle represents the company’s conscience and it encourages an effort to be made to think through any decision which has potential ethical implications.”

[00:00:55] David: Yes.

[00:00:56] Santiago: In order to understand what consciously ethical means, let me start by asking you, if we’re not consciously ethical…

[00:01:04] David: I mean, instinctively ethical would be an alternative, which I think is very valid in a number of cases, and we could recruit for that, people who have the right ethical instincts. And that would be different. And I have great admiration for people who I feel are much more ethical than I am. And many of them do so instinctively. I have to think about things much harder. But I know people who are just, have an instinct to do things ethically.

And it’s sometimes, so important. If we were in crisis situations, I want someone who’s instinctively ethical. I don’t want someone who has to think about it.

[00:01:43] Santiago: But we’re not instinctively ethical.

[00:01:45] David: And I don’t think that’s our strength. I wish I was instinctively ethical, but I’m not. That’s for me as an individual.

[00:01:52] Santiago: I’m not sure I would agree with that. But that’s your self assessment.

[00:01:55] David: I’ve built instincts over the years by being consciously ethical. So my instincts have all come through a conscious effort that I want to be consciously ethical. And that has led to a position where in most contexts that I work, I am fairly instinctively ethical, but I actually know why, and I’ve thought it through, it’s sort of a conscious choice. And that’s what we’re saying as an organisation, that we actually want to make that thought process visible. We want it to be conscious, not subconscious.

[00:02:29] Santiago: So visible in what way?

[00:02:32] David: This is a good question. It’s this element of the way it’s described in the principle is to think through. That thought process should be something which can be repeated and shared with others. And it could be challenged by others. That’s important, that if you’re being instinctively ethical, then it’s very hard to challenge that, because this is your instinct, and to challenge it is to challenge you as an individual, as a person.

[00:03:01] Santiago: You may, in reflection, in hindsight or reflecting, be able to justify instincts.

[00:03:07] David: Absolutely. I know people who do that a lot. They fit, they retrofit the justification to the instinct. And that’s different to me to being consciously ethical and to being conscious of it. To be conscious is different from that. And don’t get me wrong, I value people who are instinctively ethical, who do this with good intention, with the right skill sets and so on. In many other contexts that’s the right thing, but for us as an organisation I really believe in consciously ethical.

[00:03:42] Santiago: And is it partly motivated to, or is partly the motivation to not get things wrong? From an ethical perspective.

[00:03:52] David: Yes, absolutely. You’re right in some sense that, in the sort of thinking fast, thinking slow sort of process. This is thinking slow and there’s depth to that, which is, I think, ethical decision deserve consideration. So there’s this element of actually saying, if there are ethical implications, then they deserve consideration, they deserve thought, which is thinking slow. Thinking through, thinking about this and being able to then, potentially explain to others the thought process behind it. It’s this consciousness of why you’re making the decisions you are with ethical connotation.

[00:04:34] Santiago: But surely, to some degree, every decision could have potential ethical implications.

[00:04:43] David: Well, yes, maybe you’re right. Maybe this should, you should always consider the ethical implications, but I feel that there are certainly decisions in life where it’s not so much ethical implications as, practical implications. There’s decisions in life, which are, there isn’t really, ethics don’t really come into it, the alternatives are all ethical, let’s say, you know…

[00:05:16] Santiago: So sometimes acting is ethical, and not acting…

[00:05:19] David: Is also ethical.

[00:05:20] Santiago: Is also ethical.

[00:05:22] David: Yeah, and sometimes acting is ethical, but not acting is not ethical, and sometimes acting is not ethical, and not acting is also not ethical, and then you’re really in trouble. And that does happen. There are these dilemmas around this, and where there are no…

[00:05:35] Santiago: They’re very complex philosophical…

[00:05:37] David: Exactly. And so, I think this is where, it is not about us always being ethical. But it’s being consciously ethical, where we can, and being conscious of the ethics around what we’re doing. There are going to be positions where, you know, and I’m aware of this from the data science work that we do.

We work as data scientists in a lot of different cases. The ethics around data science are really difficult. I talk about this when I talk about responsible AI. I love giving a poll to people of should data scientists take a you know, commit to do no harm, and most people said yes. And I argued that almost certainly the people who said no were probably data scientists. Because I don’t know that I can do no harm. It would paralyse me. And this is where the philosophers are great on this. If they didn’t ask to do no harm, they asked to purposively do no harm. That I can do.

[00:06:32] Santiago: Asked to what?

[00:06:33] David: Purposively. Don’t do harm on purpose. Now that I can do. But that’s maybe not good enough.

[00:06:40] Santiago: So many times, trying to, or thinking about this principle when trying to make a decision, your response was first “do no harm”.

[00:06:48] David: Yes. And that’s so important in many different ways, being consciously ethical is about recognising that we want to make sure that we’ve considered things to make sure that we’re not doing harm, you know, because we’ve been negligent or we’ve been, we’ve not thought things through enough.

So that conscious approach of actually being careful and trying to avoid doing harm is important. But recognizing that actually doing no harm is beyond my skill set, because if I’m going to have impact, there’s no way of knowing the full nature and the full complexity of that long term impact in different ways. And there are certainly cases where there is no option to do no harm to anyone.

I mean, people who built aeroplanes. Yes, they are incredibly safe. You know, it’s one of the safest forms of travel. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t incidents. And there’s a whole system for recognizing and learning from those incidents, this is really important. But it’s recognising that doing no harm is beyond the expertise of the engineers that build the process. But minimising harm is what you have to do responsibly. And learning from when harm happens to reduce it in the future, that’s the responsibility of the industry. That’s built into that particular industry, and this is important, and this is about being ethical in your processes.

[00:08:25] Santiago: Yes, and minimising harm is one aspect of being ethical, being ethical does not restrict to that.

[00:08:31] David: Absolutely.

[00:08:32] Santiago: But, you know, looking at, or thinking through any decision with an ethical lens can, it can be painful, it can be slow, it can be very challenging in terms of being able to actually reach decisions.

[00:08:56] David: Yeah, it, it can be paralysing in certain cases. And there are wonderful examples in research, where the ethical processes put in place actually do harm.

[00:09:12] Santiago: For example?

[00:09:14] David: So…

[00:09:16] Santiago: My understanding was that the ethical processes were there to remove harm.

[00:09:22] David: Yes, but by removing harm in certain ways, you can cause harm in others. And that’s where all the complexity lies. In this case I’d like to work in the hypothetical.

[00:09:35] Santiago: Okay.

[00:09:36] David: Yeah? Let’s say, hypothetically, that you have a process which gets set up which really means that your data around for you as an individual when you’re going to get medical services is really protected. Those data protection systems are really put in place very well so your data is extremely protected and you are… removed the risk of it being reused without your knowledge, or for other purposes.

[00:10:05] Santiago: Okay.

[00:10:05] David: Yeah? It seems like a very ethical process because that’s been done to safeguard you. Let’s say for instance, that actually there’s a certain disease or certain issue, which required data from across the country from people to be able to make progress and analyse or do this, which is maybe a rare disease, which requires the large amount of data available. And it’s nothing to do with, it wouldn’t necessarily have affected you to have your data used to help identify this, but the protections put in place mean that it isn’t used for that. And therefore, because that data isn’t used, that disease becomes more serious, or many people suffer, or lose their livelihoods, or lose their lives because of it.

[00:10:53] Santiago: Then I would question the processes that were put in place.

[00:11:01] David: Absolutely, but the point is you couldn’t predict that this disease would need that data in that way. COVID is a fantastic example of this, that actually the spread of COVID and the way it came about and how quickly it affected us as a society, our processes weren’t set up to deal with a disease of that nature. And our ethical processes, which had been put in place to protect us in different ways, needed to change to deal with this.

The whole process is for how to develop vaccines had to change, the ethical processes involved needed to change to enable the more rapid development of vaccines. And the issues that caused, because there were people who died because of some of the vaccines. And so the balance between these, because those processes have been shortened.

I don’t have the answers here, but I do know that it’s hard. Being consciously ethical really is about thinking through. We can’t get everything right, ethical processes are imperfect, all of them, and we need to recognize them as such. But we need to make sure that we are putting the thought in, we’re doing the hard work related to this.

[00:12:08] Santiago: Again, rather than being paralysed, or this principle being paralysing, it’s an encouragement to make an effort.

[00:12:18] David: Exactly. This is the thing. The way this principle is phrased, it is really about valuing effort which is put into this process. It isn’t about it being punitive. It isn’t about it expecting people to be instinctive on this, which is a big ask. It is about the thought process and valuing that thought process.

[00:12:47] Santiago: And how that thought can really help you make better decisions.

[00:12:51] David: Yes. And yeah, really recognizing that, you know, there are ethical implications for so many things that we do. And making the effort is what we require, is what we expect of our staff. We’ve got a distributed decision making process, we try to enable that. And so expecting our staff to be able to be consciously ethical, if you think about how we try to support staff, to be able to do this, it is about giving them the support, but people will challenge that and they’ll think about that and we’ll challenge each other.

[00:13:31] Santiago: Yeah, and that support, that support, I’d like to give a concrete example because there was one particular project that I was thinking of developing.

[00:13:38] David: Yeah.

[00:13:39] Santiago: That I thought did not, I could not justify being consciously ethical.

[00:13:46] David: Yes.

[00:13:47] Santiago: Until I talked it through with you.

[00:13:51] David: Yes.

[00:13:52] Santiago: And realised that within the bigger picture, we were not making negative ethical decisions.

[00:14:01] David: Yes.

[00:14:03] Santiago: Or unethical decisions.

[00:14:05] David: Yes, and we were thinking about the ethics side of it, and we were recognising the world is imperfect, if we had unlimited resources, we would maybe do things differently. But within the limitations of what we have, this is maybe a way to ethically use the resources we have, as effectively as we can, to serve those that need to be served, and prioritise that.

And that, it’s hard. And thinking about it, being consciously ethical does not mean that you will always make the ethical decision. But it means that you will consider the ethical decisions at all times.

[00:14:47] Santiago: Minimise potential negative ethical implications.

[00:14:52] David: That is certainly my desire, yes. And to recognize that where there are compromises that have to be made because of resources, because of whatever the other elements, where in doing so, even if you’re having to make compromises, they are being considered. They are not just happening by negligence.

Compromises will be needed at times in our decision making process. I think the example you were referring to, to be more concrete, this was an example of offering a service to people who could afford it and not to people who couldn’t. And this goes against some of the sort of inclusivity elements that we want in general.

[00:15:42] Santiago: And it was a specific service that could help in professional development.

[00:15:50] David: Yes.

[00:15:51] Santiago: So accessibility to that service is important.

[00:15:55] David: And therefore you know, how can we justify not making it an inclusive service? That was part of the question that you posed. And part of the justification was that at this point in time we can’t build the inclusive service, but offering the exclusive service to the people who can afford it is a step towards building a more inclusive solution.

[00:16:25] Santiago: And it will help us develop the mechanisms that we need for inclusivity.

[00:16:30] David: Exactly, and we have a principle on Inherently Inclusive. That was, if you want, more than just Consciously Ethical, it was the Inherently Inclusive that was really worrying you about this. And the two come together.

[00:16:43] Santiago: But that’s why Consciously Ethical is part of the Inherently Inclusive group.

[00:16:47] David: Absolutely. Absolutely. This has been good. Any other elements?

[00:16:52] Santiago: I think we could keep discussing this for hours and hours and perhaps yeah, this is one that I feel quite strongly about. And if only everyone was more consciously ethical.

[00:17:08] David: I wish everyone was inherently or instinctively ethical, but…

[00:17:12] Santiago: That would be better.

[00:17:14] David: I think there is a, there’s a cost to this, there’s a cost to this as an organisation, but it’s one we pay willingly, it’s one where we feel strongly that this is central to who we are.

[00:17:27] Santiago: Yeah, thank you.

[00:17:30] David: Thank you.