Ethics

The Williams Ethical Assessment Inventory is a tool we can use to determine what values a person internally supports. The values are clearly quantifiable using the Ethical Assessment Inventory by using an easy to view graph and numbers that correlate with a person values. The Ethical Assessment Inventory that we are working with reflects that the ethical profile of this decision maker is based on Character. Moral values such as integrity, trustworthiness, and honesty are regarded as the highest functioning values of this ethical profile.

Enron’s mission statement reflects that the “company prided itself on four key values: respect, integrity, communication and excellence.” (Wiki, 2012) It is obvious this was not the case. In the Enron scandal, the executives obviously did not support the ethical profile of character. If they did, then some of the decisions made would have been based on Character and guided by the company’s own mission statement. Therefore some of the decisions made may not have occurred. There were many decisions that were not aligned within the character based ethical profile and their own mission statement. The values the executives supported obviously where not within the character profile. Instead the executives chose to defraud many for there own financial success. The stakeholder and stockholders and the need for greed seemed to have taken over the innate values one would have if they were to display the character value from their core being.

Once someone begins to be persuaded by a force that goes against their inner values, most people recognize they are of course and an internal dialogue should begin to happen within to realign yourself with your core values and the values that your company supports. The executives seemed to have been guided by the ethical profile of results that only benefitted themselves. This may have been the case since the outcome is already known. If a character based ethical profile was at work then this...