Question

What are the disclosure rules on ethical principles?

Answer 1

The disclosure rule on ethical principles refers to the process of evaluating an ethical decision by asking the person involved in the decision about how he or she would feel in explaining the decision to or in the public. According to the disclosure rule, whenever you are involved in a decision that poses an ethical dilemma for you, think about various consequences of your actions or decisions. How are you going to feel when your family members, friends, relatives and other loved ones will come to know about the actions that you are going to take? Will you be comfortable in reading about your actions on a Facebook post? Are you going to be proud or shameful of your decision when you are going to read about it on a front page headline of leading daily newspaper? The disclosure rule asks the protagonist to think about these situations and then decide whether or not they should be pursuing their decisions or actions.

The disclosure rule is a powerful rule that is used to test an ethical situation. Athletes and sport persons round the world are advised by their coaches and management to use this tool to decide on whether or not they should be taking any action/s in their field of sports that gives them undue advantage against their competition. For example, taking performance-enhancing drugs. There have been numerous cases of sport persons allegedly involved in doping and taking these drugs to enhance their performance on the field. But, almost all of these incidents come to light some day or the other and these athletes have to put themselves, their family members, their country people to shame. Only if they had used the disclosure rule to evaluate their decisions, their country and the world would have been proud of them and their achievement. Even in leading organizations, employees are trained to use disclosure rule every time they face an ethical dilemma.