Ethics is accepted conduct within a society but legal is bound to the law. Ethics include honesty, truthful, relevant information, etc. Unethical communication distorts the information. Unethical communication includes the following:
1. Plagiarizing: If you quote other ideas saying or lines as your own (without citing), it is plagiarizing or intellectual theft.
2. Omitting essential information: If you hide or omit important information, it is also unethical.
3. Selective misquoting: If you quote other ideas wrongly, it is also unethical.
4. Misrepresenting numbers: Instead of presenting actual data, statistics, etc., if you include wrong, it makes you unethical.
5. Distorting visual: According to the situation, a company should present a graph, chart, line graph, etc. If you distort visuals, it is unethical behavior.
6. Failing to respect privacy or information security needs: Many information should be kept secret for the welfare of the company. Secret information is respectful and meaningful for the company. If you did not keep it secret, it makes you unethical.
Distinguishing Ethical Dilemmas from Ethical Lapses
An ethical lapse is a mistake or error in judgment that gives harmful results to a company. The ethical dilemma is faced when you must choose between two (or more) alternatives that both seem valid, correct, and ethical. An ethical dilemma can lead to an ethical lapse if you didn’t handle it nicely. For example, as ahead of the metropolitan, you need to avoid a footpath shopkeeper. Here comes an ethical dilemma because you may think footpath shopkeepers are poor and for hand-to-mouth, they are doing so. On contrary, you also think that they are giving disturbances to the passerby. In business too, you come across an ethical dilemma but if you choose the wrong alternative, you will get an ethical lapse. For example, company betterment, you want punctuality of your employees. Thinking so, if you are forced to come as usual time for a sick pregnant woman, it is an ethical lapse. Here ethical lapse happens because you choose unethical choice.
Ensuring Ethical Communication
In business, ethical communication should be maintained by individuals, company leadership, and ethical policies. Some companies also make codes of ethics of punctuality, dress, speech, etc. Just only following codes of ethic don’t make employee ethical. All the ethical aspects cannot be written in ethics code. For example, if smoking cigarettes inside the office is not written in the ethics code, it doesn’t mean that you are allowed to have cigarettes. So, you yourself maintain ethics understanding the company’s culture. In the absence of clear guidelines, to be ethical, you can ask yourself the following questions:
- Have you taken the right decision?
- Doesn’t your speech hurt others?
- Will your assumption and thought persuade others?
- Are not you imposing ideas?
- Is your idea beneficial to the company?
- Do other people do the same way in the company?
Ensuring Legal Communication
Business communication is also related to legal communication. If you communicated illegally, you are sentenced to jail. Legal communication happens in the following:
1. Promotional communication: To promote your products, you should make an advertisement. While advertising, you should govern truth and accuracy. False and deceptive advertisements send you to jail.
2. Contract: A contract is legally binding that happens for hoping specific purpose only for a certain time.
3. Employment communication: While communicating with employees, you shouldn’t use bias and vulgar words. Similarly, according to law, you cannot discriminate against females or other minorities involved in the work.
4. Intellectual property: Copy-write material, internet domain (Facebook, Google) are intellectual property. If you use copy write the material or hack other domains, you become illegal.
5. Financial reporting: Financial reports, balance sheets, annual income, etc. should have accuracy.
6. Defamation: To defame others, you should have proof. If not, it is illegal.
7. Transparency equipment: In business, transparency means to be honest. Your equipments should be well-organized.
