Ethical Values

What are Ethical Values?

Ethical values are principles people use to judge conduct as right or wrong. Honesty, fairness, responsibility, respect and compassion are common examples. They describe what a person or organization regards as morally important.

Ethics, moral values and other values

“Moral values” often refers to the same concern with right and wrong. Values more broadly describe what matters to someone, which can include convenience or achievement as well as honesty. Ethics asks how conduct should be judged and justified; an ethical value identifies a priority within that judgment. Cultural, religious, philosophical and personal commitments can shape those priorities.

Examples of ethical values

• Honesty concerns truthfulness.
• Responsibility concerns what we owe others and how we account for our actions.
• Respect concerns treating people with dignity.
• Compassion concerns responding to suffering.

These values can guide decisions, but saying you hold them does not show that you act on them.

For example, responsibility might mean telling a colleague that you introduced an error into a shared report, correcting it, and contacting the people who received the wrong version. The value becomes visible in how you address the consequences, not merely in saying that accuracy matters.

Respect might mean hearing a coworker's different view before judging it, asking what they mean, and challenging the argument without dismissing the person because of their background. It does not require agreeing with the view. These are illustrations of conduct consistent with the values, not guarantees of trust or a good outcome.

When values conflict

The University of Texas at Austin's Ethics Unwrapped explanation discusses competing priorities in ethical choices. For example, honesty and another person's privacy may pull in different directions when deciding what to disclose.

A list of good qualities cannot decide that case for you. You still need to work through what each value requires in the situation. Describing the values people hold is also different from arguing for the values they ought to hold.

Related reading

See the list of values for more examples.