In Teaching Professional Ethics

Is it appropriate for a professional ethics instructor to divulge her own views on the choice of an ethical theory to students, or is the unbiased discussion of theories preferable? Should the instructor “narrow the field” to one or two ethical theories or should a fuller range, or a diversity of ethical theories, be introduced? As an assistant professor charged with teaching professional ethics, I’ve found myself faced with questions like these concerning pedagogical issues to which I had previously given little thought. Foremost among these is the issue of the “best” way to teach professional ethics, a required course for several different degree programs at my institution, to students like those I see,1 for whom professional ethics is probably the only ethics course, and the only philosophy course, they will ever take. Given the limitation of class time (one semester) in relation to the amount of relevant information that should be conveyed, I have found that some important decisions need to be made regarding such instruction. The particular pedagogical decisions discussed in this paper are: whether to limit the range of ethical theories discussed and whether to disclose one’s own ethical theory preferences to students. In teaching introductory ethics classes as a graduate student I had assumed, without serious questioning, that the correct approach to teaching ethics is to present students with the full gamut of moral theories, in as objective a manner as possible, and allow students to make their own reasoned choices regarding these theories. No doubt, from what I can tell, many ethics instructors would agree with such an approach and would wonder why I hesitate to do the same in teaching professional ethics classes. And yet I find myself questioning whether this is the best approach to teaching these courses.