My Journey To Becoming an

Ethical Leader
By: Kevin L. Fowler
June 14, 2013
Word Count: 2,476

Statement Overview
INTRODUCTION
MY UPBRINGING
MY PROFESSIONAL CAREER
ETHICAL COMMITMENTS AND THEIR ENACTMENT
PERSONAL COMMITMENTS
1. TO TREAT EVERYONE WITH RESPECT
2. TO RESPECT FOR AUTHORITY
3. TO AVOID WORKPLACE DRAMA
4. TO BE TEACHABLE
5. TO SERVE
PROFESSIONAL COMMITMENTS
1. TO PROTECT PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION
2. TO OFFER ACCESSIBILITY
3. TO SECURE PRIVACY
4. TO BE A RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE
IN CONCLUSION
REFERENCES

Fowler

Introduction
Before one can analyze the ways in which they hope to be ethical individuals for
the future, it is critical for a reflection of the past to occur. Socrates iconic the
unexamined life is not worth living reminds us that contemplation should be the
predecessor of continuation. Our futures are mapped by the experiences that we have
encountered in the past and the things that we have learned up to the present. It is where
we have developed our value systems, where we have witnessed or been victim to
unethical corruption, where we have personally witnessed goodness and ethical behavior,
and how we learn from these experiences.

My Upbringing
I came from a lower income home in rural East Tennessee. Surrounded by a
community that was ravaged by poverty, low education levels, and drug abuse, my
parents worked hard to ensure that I would not become another Monroe County statistic.
My mother pulled me out of the public school system due to (among other things) its
failing educational record at the time and sought to independently educate me with a
combination of home schooling, dual enrollment at local colleges, and umbrella
cooperatives. Even with their high school diplomas and meager means, my parents
ensured that I was exposed to rigorous academic standards and the arts, evidenced by my
being 16 years old in the organic chemistry college classroom and a serious student of
classical guitar.
My father wanted to instill in me the ethic of work, yet he knew that education
would eventually allow me to pursue whatever work that I wanted. In the end, dont be a

Fowler
grease monkey like me, my auto mechanic father warned. While he did not want it to be
my career in the end, he did want me to be exposed to this and other forms of perfectly
honorable work: I worked in our family-owned garage; I worked with a lawnscaping
company trimming headstones in cemeteries; I worked at a full service gas station as a
service attendant and janitor; and I worked two summers on an assembly line making car
parts.
Whereas my father is where I learned my work ethic, my mother, on the other
hand, was my moral compass. Whether it be her diligently taking my siblings and me to
church, or her praying with me every night and being such a moral authority during the
day, what she has taught me is the lense for which I view acceptable and unacceptable
behavior. While this faith-based language may make some feel uncomfortable, I cannot
neglect the effect it plays into my ethical decision making to this very day. While it is
debated how much upbringing plays into our ethical philosophies (Bell, Willy, Phillip,
Robert, 2011), I strongly affirm that these humble origins instilled what I view to be a
strong value system.

My Professional Career
In my undergraduate years, I excelled at three thingstechnology, teaching, and
political science. These three fields led me through many journeys and many types of
classrooms and government settings. I taught in prisons, high schools, middle schools,
wealthy school districts, poor school districts, corporate computer training classrooms,
and then eventually to college administration. I learned that ethical dilemmas manifest
themselves in all sectors of professions.

Fowler
My first job was as a student teacher at a school where football was king. The
school had won many state titles and the football players were treated as royalty. One of
my students had just received a full ride to play for a nationally ranked, Division 1,
NCAA team. He was one week away from graduation. When grading his last paper, there
was a turn of phrase written in the document that seemed very peculiar to me. I plugged
the phrase into a reliable search engine, enclosed the phrase with quotation marks so I
would receive an exact match, and sure enough found the phrase from his paper (and
many others) off of the unattributed website.
This was my first ethical dilemma as an educator. I wanted a job at this school. It
was one of the highest paying in the state. My blowing the whistle on this school hero
would draw the ire from students, faculty, and administration alike. My taking action
would fail the student and dash his Division 1 hopes. I did what I believed was the right
thing; I consulted my mentor teacher and together we reported him for plagiarism.
Whereas the student handbook said that the assignment would be an automatic F,
something different occurred. A Gerald Ford-like, Nixonian pardon came down from
administration that said he was entitled to a do over. Knowing that no other students
accused of this academic crime were entitled to the same, I felt that this was very
unethical.
I did not get the job. In fact, I took a job teaching middle schoolsomething I
never envisioned doing. But eventually this middle school classroom led me to the
private sector where I became an IT (Information Technology) trainer, and this led me to
my current position as the educational technologist and IT director at a community
college in East Tennessee. Now, as a supervisor of one, a manager of 8, a key contact to

Fowler
vendors, and co-overseer of a modest budget, I feel that while ethical dilemmas appeared
at every professional position that I have had, the temptations, responsibilities, and
pressures have multiplied in this role. Yet, I have always felt that the following ethical
commitments have always kept me grounded and will hopefully do the same for the
future.

Fowler

Ethical Commitments and their Enactment

Before I detail these ethical commitments, I must first make a crucial distinction.
I want to divide what I view as personal and professional ethics. Cyberethicist Herman
Tavani (2012), I believe, would do the same:
Why have a category called professional ethics? After all, one could reasonably
argue that independent of whether a particular moral issue happens to arise in
either a professional or a nonprofessional context, ethics is ethics; the same basic
ethical rules apply to professionals as to ordinary individuals. In response, many
ethicists argue that some moral issues affecting professionals are sufficiently
distinct and specialized to warrant a separate field of study. (p. 41)
If a case in point is needed: There is nothing unethical about my enjoying social
networking sites in the privacy of my own home. At my desk, on the clock, there most
certainly would be an issue with this. For many, this would be considered time theft.
Below you will find commitments that entail my personal ethics that I carry into
the workplace. These are personal commitments and I do not consider universal, whereas
my professional commitments are ethical considerations that can be found in many
informational and instructional technology codes of conduct and employers handbooks.

Personal Commitments
1. To Treat Everyone With Respect
Whereas there are cutthroat, dog-eat-dog workplace cultures that exist, I have
personally learned that treating everyone from the janitor to your superiors with the same

Fowler
amount of respect will create a more harmonious work environment for all that is
involved. I enact this principle with shear kindness to all, whether or not it serves me in
the end, which I am sure could be argued to be rather deontological. A personal example
that could be seen as antiquated in some cultures, but welcomed in the south where I
currently reside, I call everyone sir, maam, or madam regardless of age or social
standing. I see this and other methods as the most tangible way to treat everyone with
respect.
2. To Respect Authority
Whilst many are naturally antagonistic or skeptical towards authority, I believe
authority needs to naturally be respected until there is need to be antagonistic or skeptical
towards it. While there are many ethical dilemmas where the right thing to do would be to
go against the wishes of superiors and to become a whistleblower, in my experience there
are just as many unethical situations by attempting to subvert the authority that has been
put in place. I believe that this commitment in action means to do more than what is
required of you and to be cordial to supervisors. I believe it also means sharing dissent
with the highest tenor of respect.
3. To Avoid Workplace Drama
Plenty of unethical situations arise from being apart of the office whisper culture.
It is here where you become aware of items that are best left behind closed doors in the
HR officers office. It is where time theft can occur. And it is also where unethical
behavior in others is often enabled. I believe all differences can be worked out

Fowler
professionally if all employees treat each other with respect and avoid these water cooler
whispers.
4. To be Teachable
I believe that an attitude of humilityand more particularityteachability is an
important commitment to strive for to become an ethical individual. Great harm can be
created when others assume they know the law/policies/etc, especially when they believe
they are above them. Ethical individuals constantly reflect whether or not their behaviors
are in fact in line with policies. Individuals that are teachable are up to date on the
professional literature, hold an open dialogue with their supervisors and internal auditors,
and go above and beyond to ensure that undesirable behavior is not encountered.
5. To Serve
In a rather Kantian mindset, it is also important to treat people as ends-inthemselves and never merely as means to an end (Tavani). I believe the best way to
accomplish this is to have a mindset of service. Many ethicists eventually grew skeptical
of utilitarianism due to (among other things) the self-absorbed, virtual hedonist search for
pleasure so long as it does not infringe on others happiness. I believe that using
individuals as springboards in the pursuit of ones own happiness or agenda may invite
one into multiple ethical quandaries due to the simple analysis of each action and whether
or not it infringed on someones happiness. In fact, I believe that most individuals that
have been apart of a family unit, volunteered for a non-profit, joined a religious body, or
simply held employment in a company whose mission aligns with the employees, all
believe that they are feeling most ethical because they are serving something bigger than
themselves.

Fowler

Professional Commitments
In my current role as an educational technologist/IT administrator, below are
ethical commitments that deal more closely with my profession.

1. To Protect Personally Identifiable Information

It is startling how the majority of identity theft is not performed by anonymous
hackers but are organized by the victims family, friends, and even malicious and/or
negligent activity taken by IT staff. It is also startling how someones lives can change
simply because an unknown individual was able to extract data from a stolen laptop, or
someone who was able to access an unencrypted file on a webserver. To ensure nothing
unethical can be done with the personally identifiable information (PII) that I oversee for
users, a thorough inventory needs to be taken of all PII on our campus and any found
needs to be reported immediately for encryption or multi-pass deletion.

2. To Offer Accessibility
Disabilitiesin particular hearing lossruns deep in my family. My niece
Ashlynne is profoundly deaf and is in desperate need of many accessibility features in
and outside of the classroom. As I am the one responsible for the computing needs of all
of our faculty, staff, and students, I am constantly reminded of my dear niece and how
upset I would be if her local community college in Nebraska refused to provide
transcripts for in-class videos, denied her request for an interpreter or transcriptionist due

Fowler
to institutional costs, or purchased computers without ready access to auxillary jacks so
she could plug in her hearing aid magnifier to the computers sound system.
As disabled accessibility advocate Norman Coombs (2010) writes, I believe that
creating accessible online learning experiences for students with disabilities can do even
more than give them a quality educationit can empower them to become stronger, more
self-reliant people. I not only want to empower users like my niece Ashlynne, but I want
to ensure that all users with special needs are able to not only obtain their education, but
to use the tools that my department provides them to become more self-reliant.
3. To Secure Privacy
As a leader in IT, I also feel that it is incumbent upon me to respect the privacy of
the users that use and will use my classroom technologies. Whereas Big Brother was
once an Orwellian boogeyman, in light of recent events it has been revealed that not only
is some of our private data being unknowingly accessed by the federal government, but
government contracted IT analysts and data custodians are those that are intentionally
gathering data. (Greenwald, Makaskil, Poitras, 2013)
Whereas there are perfectly ethical scenarios where this data could be handed
over (terms of service notifications, establishment of reasonable doubt, issued search
warrants, court orders, subponeas, etc.), reviewing and utilizing private data where the
subject is completely unaware is unethical and an invasion of privacy. I hope to give my
users and future collaborators better.
4. To Be a Responsible Government Employee

Fowler
There are many temptations as a government employee: access to software,
professional connections, state vehicles, flexible scheduling, mobile devices, and
relationships with vendors with deep pockets, to just name a few. Whereas none of these
at face value are unethical, even the slightest notion of utilizing these for personal gain
have the propensity to create many problems.
The reputation of public employees precedes itself; corrupt city, county, state, and
federal officials have abused their power and government privileges to create an
unmistakable skepticism towards all public servants. I desire for my staff and myself to
rebuff these stereotypes and create state government positions that tax payers can once
again believe in.

Fowler

In Conclusion

No one is perfect and we have all made mistakes. We have all taken advantage of
a system or individuals and committed unethical behaviors. It is important that we
regularly pause and reflect and examine our lives to improve our professions and
ourselves.
After reflecting on my journey to becoming an ethical, educational technology
leader, I cannot dismiss what a profound influence my humble upbringing has played a
part in this journey. It is here where my moral compass and work ethic were established
by my mother and father respectively.
In every professional role I have filled, I have had my fair share of ethical
dilemmas and my current role is no exception. In fact, my current position of managerial
oversight, budgetary influence, and massive responsibilities puts me in a position where I
am faced with ethical dilemmas quite routinely. During this reflection, I have cemented
personal and professional ethical commitments to guide me through troubled waters.
Among my personal commitments are to treat everyone (especially authority) with
respect, to avoid workplace drama, to be teachable, and to serve. My professional
commitments, on the other hand, consist of the protection of privacy and personally
identifiable information, to strive for an accessible environment, and to be an accountable
government employee.
Hopefully these commitments and their enactment will not only guide me through
my current journey, but for other places that my profession might take me.

Fowler

References
Bell, R., Willy, G., Phillip, M., & Robert, M. (2011). THE POWER OF RELIGION,
UPBRINGING, CERTIFICATION, AND PROFESSION TO PREDICT MORAL
CHOICE. Journal of Legal, Ethical and Regulatory Issues, 14(1), 1-24. Retrieved
June 15, 2013, from
http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.utk.edu:90/docview/886552653/fulltextPDF/
13EAFB5BA866F46280/1?accountid=14766

Coombs, N. (2010). Making online teaching accessible: inclusive course design for
students with disabilities. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

Greenwald, G., Makaskil, E., & Poitras, L. (2013, June 10). Edward Snowden: the
whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations | World news | The
Guardian . Latest US news, world news, sport and comment from the Guardian |
guardiannews.com | The Guardian . Retrieved June 17, 2013, from
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsawhistleblower-surveillance

Tavani, H. T. (2012). Ethics and technology: controversies, questions, and strategies for
ethical computing (4th ed.). Hoboken, N.J: Wiley