THE DIMENSION
Checking evidence, personal interests, and convenient explanations during a difficult decision.
The dimension in context
Checking evidence, personal interests, and convenient explanations during a difficult decision.
You may examine reasons that make a preferred choice seem easier.
You may rely on familiar explanations when the situation is uncertain.
An illustrative work situation
A participant assumes that a small inconvenience to another team is harmless because that team has more resources. The assumption makes a preferred decision easier to defend, but no one has checked the actual workload or consequence. The ethical question includes the information being treated as settled.
Examining assumptions requires attention to explanations that favor one’s own position. It does not mean that every assumption is false or that motives can be inferred from a response. A careful discussion asks which claim matters to the decision and what evidence could challenge it.
A small practice to examine
Write the strongest reason for your preferred option and identify the factual assumption inside it. Ask what you would need to know if another person used the same reasoning to impose a cost on you. Seek relevant information where appropriate, then revise the argument if the assumption is weaker than it first appeared.
Questioning every assumption equally can obscure the material issue.
A question for closer study
Can participants identify a decision-relevant assumption when doing so may make their preferred option less convenient?
Read the example alongside the research
The following editorial passages come from the linked framework chapters. They provide context for the original teaching example above; the example is fictional and is not a reported study finding.
A plausible explanation can help someone understand a difficult choice, but it can also close inquiry too early. Statements such as everyone agreed, the deadline required it, or this is how the process works may describe part of the situation while leave important questions unanswered. MED’s assumption-testing domain asks whether the participant examines those reasons rather than accepts them solely because they support the preferred outcome. The target is a described practice, not an accusation that the person is rationalizing or secretly intends harm.
Continue: Convenient explanations and the need to test assumptions →
Group approval deserves particular care. Agreement may reflect informed consideration, shared incentives, lack of information, or reluctance to dissent. MED cannot infer which explanation applies from a self-report. It can invite the participant to ask whether anyone with a relevant perspective was absent or unable to question the decision. The exercise should remain proportionate and should not require gathering private information unnecessarily. Where a real concern involves formal obligations or potential harm, an appropriate advice or reporting route may be more important than completing another reflection worksheet.
Continue: Convenient explanations and the need to test assumptions →
Future research should therefore define the context of any criterion. A relationship between MED and performance on a low-stakes reflection task would not establish competence in high-stakes professional ethics. Studies should describe issue characteristics, participant expertise, available information, and the evaluation method. Reports should stay within the evidence actually obtained. At present, no MED study has established prediction evidence in any context. The proposed framework remains a way to examine ordinary decision habits voluntarily, with explicit recognition that ethical judgment cannot be reduced to a context-free personal profile.
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
Ogunfowora et al. - A meta-analytic investigation of the antecedents, theoretical correlates, and consequences of moral disengagement at work ↗Detert, Treviño & Sweitzer - Moral disengagement in ethical decision making: a study of antecedents and outcomes ↗Jones - Ethical decision making by individuals in organizations: an issue-contingent model ↗Kish-Gephart, Harrison & Treviño - Bad apples, bad cases, and bad barrels: meta-analytic evidence about sources of unethical decisions at work ↗