The March 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review has an edited conversation with Howard Gardner, a professor of psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Professor Gardner's research on how professionals work is now a book, Five Minds for the Future.
Gardner described five minds (or sets of skills):
1. The disciplined mind is how one gains expertise.
2. The synthesizing mind combines information from a variety of sources.
3. The creating mind looks for new ideas and discovers new things.
4. The respectful mind tries to understand others.
5. The ethical mind considers how one's actions affect the world.
A whistle-blower is using his ethical mind by considering the impact of his company's actions on its customers or the environment.
An ethical mind begins at home, as a child learns his parents' values.
Seeing others behave badly undermines the ethical mind, while seeing others do the right things strengthens it.
Gardner points out that conflicts betwen stakeholders make ethical behavior difficult.
He states that journalists face difficulties because they desire to report objectively on important events, but the public desires sensationalism, and the publisher wants advertising dollars and a paper that avoids offending advertisers.
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