Don't Do Good By Doing Bad
A HANDY THREE-PART TEST ALONG WITH SOME HANDY RULES OF THUMB
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But if you do right to me, baby
I’ll do right to you, too
Ya got to do unto others
Like you’d have them, like you’d have them, do unto youBob Dylan
It is not enough to do good. Let me repeat that. Doing good is not enough. Many people do some good in this world, by which I mean achieve some positive outcome, but too often we achieve that outcome by doing bad, which is not good enough.
Yes, this is a piece about how the ends almost never justify the means spiced up with a dash of the Golden Rule.
To start, I will readily concede that sometimes the ends may indeed justify the means. But rarely. If we agree that killing people is bad, we may still conclude that killing a bad person before they can harm an innocent is okay. Great. That is a pretty exotic scenario, though. More commonly, you may have experiences where you determine that being mean or loud or harsh or blunt or rude or even flagrantly dishonest will achieve your positive end, but doing so begs key questions: Is the choice to behave badly worth it? Is it the only or even the best option for achieving that good end?
And don’t rationalize. It is all too easy for us humans to rationalize doing bad when the outcome is positive even though we have made no exertion of integrity.
After all, while much good in this world has come from those who seek laudable goals such as freedom, truth, virtue, progress, and even love, how many atrocities have been committed in the pursuit of freedom, truth, virtue, progress, and even love?
You know sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.
Bob Dylan
A HANDY THREE-PART TEST
To help us along, here is a three-part test for determining just when the ends justify the means. All three standards must be met in order to pass the test.
First, is the outcome truly good?
In other words, is it something that most reasonable people would recognize as a real win for the species, no matter how small, something to be admired, embraced, and replicated, or is it just a convenience for you or your organization?
Second, does the good of the outcome completely offset the bad of the means, including foreseeable repercussions?
This one is tough because there is no room for error. Furthermore, since every action has consequences, those need to be weighed in the balance. It’s a difficult call here and a very high standard.
Third, if the outcome both is truly good and absolutely offsets any bad associated with the means, is it the only reasonable way of achieving your purpose?
I am not proposing an unreasonable 20/20-hindsight analysis here. The question is, in the moment of decision, were there no other sensible means to achieve the end? Are you sure you are not taking ethical shortcuts?
Failing to meet any one of these three admittedly lofty bars is enough to sink the integrity of the whole project and you must conclude that the ends do not justify the means.
These sorts of dilemmas come up all the time for mission-driven organizations. Assuming that your mission is truly good (the first test), what negative or harmful means are allowable for you to achieve that good? Hopefully none, but for some reason that conclusion seems perpetually out of reach for so many decision-makers and organizations.
As I have mentioned numerous times, I spent decades in higher education as a faculty member and as an academic administrator. Every institution of higher education, no matter its type or size, is exceedingly complex and has a tremendous impact on its students, its staff, their families, and the community. Therefore, the brand of moral dilemma I sketched comes up all the time. In my experience, though, rarely is that three-part test applied in any rigorous or honest way. I certainly failed to apply it many times myself in decisions both large and small. To make matters worse, the complexity of many scenarios sometimes can obscure the ramifications.
From that experience I learned that it is all too easy to convince oneself that because the overall mission of the institution is good, the actions of the institution in pursuit of that mission must also be good. Sadly, that is infrequently the case. I have seen administrators and faculty rationalize away all sorts of egregious behavior by assuming that since the first test is met (that the outcome is truly good), the other two tests may be waived.
SOME HANDY RULES OF THUMB
Here is a rule of thumb for visionary, beneficent, and mission-driven organizations to apply to help avoid such pitfalls:
Don’t betray the intention and underlying principles of the mission in order to achieve the goals of the mission. Ever.
Not following this rule is tantamount to instant and de facto failure.
If your mission is to educate students to be successful in life while upholding ethical and professional standards (a common intention in university mission statements), then do so throughout the institution. Treat students, faculty, and staff they way you expect your graduates to treat others. This is golden-rule-level stuff here as well as plain good educational modeling.
The same is true for any mission-driven organization. Consider your mission. Ask yourself, what does it mean? What does it really mean? What are its implications? What assumptions does it make about ethics and behavior? Does your organization live up to those standards every day and in everything? Do you?
Of course not. We all screw up. But do you habitually correct course when you are astray and then learn from your errors, or do you just thinkingly or unthinkingly rationalize flaws away, thus compounding or repeating them?
If your organization strives to achieve some standard of human decency for your clients or society, a broad goal of many nonprofits whatever the specifics, do you apply that same standard to how you treat your workforce? Do you tolerate and rationalize low pay or a stringent work culture because you think the good you do for clients offsets it (test 2)? Is there another way (test 3)? And, please, never assume the answer is no because of past practice, culture, or (shudder) tradition.
I offer another rule of thumb:
Doing good starts at home.
NOW WHAT?
None of what I have written here is simply to apply.
To summarize:
The ends do not justify the means except when they do, which is not very often yet does happen although so infrequently that you probably should doubt yourself when it does but not every time, so it is best to just not look for it.
See? Easy-peazy.
As a public service, I offer here an algorithmic take on my three-part test:
1. Is the end truly good?
No? Then stop. You have a lot to think about, a whole lot.
Yes? Then continue.
2. Does the good of the end offset or overmatch the harm of the means?
No? Then stop, for goodness sake. Just stop.
Yes? Are you sure? Really sure? Continue.
3. Is this the only way to minimize harm while still achieving the end?
No? If there is another reasonable yet benign way to achieve the end, this is another hard stop. Pursue and embrace that other way.
Yes? Are you being creative here, really thinking this through and not just defaulting to the status quo? If so, then, go ahead.
Applying this test to every decision that involves a moral or ethical dimension (and don’t they all?) sounds like a lot, but it quickly can become a habit. Two more rules of thumb may help:
1. First and last, do no harm.
2. Be decent. At long last, just be decent.
It is great to do good. Please, keep doing good, but be very sure you are doing good the right way. Otherwise, what is the point?