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Clark Wilde
Mrs. Henry
Service Learning Per 6
October 14, 2014
Code of Ethics
I have five main ethical principles to discuss, all of which are my main values: (1)
Honesty; (2) Promise-Keeping; (3) Leadership; (4) Reputation and Morale; and (5)
Accountability. Honesty is my absolute main value because its the basis of trust, and without it,
any further relationship progression wont be allowed to exist. Honesty is the cornerstone of
trust is absolutely the most valuable perception when defining honesty (Josephine 2). Promisekeeping is another all-important value because it keeps one honest and it shows that people can
put trust in another being. When people hold themselves accountable for everything they state, it
shows, in theory, that they believe in what they say and they can accomplish the task to their full
ability. This is a durable way to put trust into people, because if they think about their response it
will be true to what they will do. Leadership is an ethic that I see as important because it is based
on keeping promises and honesty, as well as trust. It is a tool that accomplishes a task by
organizing skills brought to the situation presented. When leadership is executed in a proper way
that employs complete balance of trust and workability, it becomes an extremely important and
viable principle that helps run the world. Reputation and morale is an ethic that holds its own
importance because its main supporting foundations are promise keeping, leadership, and
unsurprisingly, trust. It protect[s] and build[s] the companys good reputation and the morale
of its employees (Josephine 3). Without holding this ethic as a closely as possible, it is hard to
be successful in the long term. For example, when a business provides a service, but they serve it

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in a poor manor, they wont stay in business because the competition will be better. The idea that
people hold their morals to who they do business with stands true in a market with a wide variety
of options. Note that people rely on morals to keep their reputation strong for their business, and
that the public will choose a different establishment if high morals arent upheld. Accountability
is an ethic that is immensely important simply because it affects how tasks get accomplished and
if they ever will. People need to hold themselves responsible to help businesses and communities
to be successful. It takes leadership skill, honesty, and promise-keeping to keep accountability in
working order. Accountability is an ethic that is the hardest to achieve because it takes all of the
above ethical standards working together to function in a legitimist way. Accountability is a lot
of responsibility because there is little compromise, especially since one usually sets the
guidelines themselves. These Ethical principles are all the basic standards I hold myself to, and
they all work together in their own way.
Personal failures and parental guidance are the two main influences of the development
of my ethical standards. Relationships with people once known as family have shaped my moral
development in how I now know to what decree I am willing to express my morals into my
everyday life. Those individuals were so far from my own personal ethical code that they
became necessary to delete from my personal life. My ethics have mostly been shaped by my
Mother, because she raised me to uphold myself with a strong work ethic, unfortunately I am still
learning from this and it will continue to take some further experience to have it down pat, but it
shapes my leadership skill as well as my accountability at my job (outside of school). To note, I
am not ashamed of failing relationships because it has led to my success to today, tomorrow and
the next day, my success after that depends on my honesty, promises, leadership skill, morale,
and accountability. Using Kohlbergs theory of moral development I have found myself at the

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Post-Conventional level. My reasoning behind this is exemplified in the above example that
states my vision on accountability. I hold myself accountable through honesty, promise-keeping,
leadership, and reputation and morale. When using these ethical standards I look at the
community in which they exist and try to uphold them in said community. Most often I will go
outside the social norm and attempt to change the way things are working to allow for the
smoother operation, whether or not people are offended. Everything can be mended to fit the
individual even if it is a big change in a community.
Civic virtue is morality or a standard of righteous behavior in a relationship to a citizens
involvement in society (Bosin 1). In our society a good citizen is someone who contributes in a
positive way to their community and follows laws no matter to what degree. It is important to
have civic virtue simply because it affects how the society functions. For instance, voting for a
public official that has a say in how your community runs is a civic virtue. Being a part of a
community and being active in the decision making of said community benefits oneself because
it creates the chance to let the everyday-humans ethics run within the local government.
Failing three classes in one semester showed me that being honest and accountable to
myself will help me be successful. I remember that during that semester I put blame upon a lot of
people other than myself, mostly teachers. Failing taught me that taking the lead (or leadership)
with my own responsibility helps achieve success. After those ideas were realized my reputation
with teachers became important because they are a step forward to attaining success, which in
my case is graduating and becoming a part of my future career. Once I was able to keep promises
and become my own leader, I was then able to become accountable to others. Which then led to
staying successful and ending up ahead of schedule in the sense of class credits which
determines how much more schooling is required to graduate.

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It is important for every individual to have a code of ethics because it provides them with
guidelines they see fit to be a functioning person in society. Whether or not these ethics work for
another individual is irrelevant because it could be completely unrelated to how they live their
life. Everyone has their standard of ethics and it is extremely important to know them because a
person who has the appearance of a regular human but doesnt live by a set of ethics can turn out
to be a monster.
This assignment hasnt per say taught me something, but rather it has showed me an indepth view of my morals. I already had the ethics beforehand and the examples happened in
advance to the writing of the Code of Ethics paper. This exemplifies Kohlbergs post
conventional level in how I dont agree with the question provided, but I still answered it in a
way that pertained to my ethics as well as the prompt. I enjoy seeing my own ethics written out
on paper because they make more sense written out in a format that lets the ideas flow in such a
way that everything gets explained. Overall it is an in-depth and thought provoking paper that is
important for everyone to write.

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Work Cited
Bosin, Sara. "Learning to Give, Philanthropy Education Resources That Teach
Giving and Civic Engagement." Learning to Give. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.
Josephson, Michael. "12 Ethical Principles for Business Executives by Michael
Josephson." Business Ethics and Leadership RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2014.
"Kohlberg - Moral Development | Simply Psychology." Kohlberg - Moral

Development | Simply Psychology. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.