Ethics is the guiding force in any respectable organization. With a moral compass, especially in the leadership of organization, a company can become compromised and fall into a quagmire of legal issues, a tarnished reputation, and devaluation of company stock if it is a publically traded company. In pursuit of examine my own ethical lens I will analyze the ethical traits of an admired leader, my own traits as exhibited in the Ethical Lens Inventory, and how I make a decision concerning a particular ethical dilemma.
Ethical Traits of President Obama My chosen leader for this ethics review is President Barack Obama. President Obama’s two leading exhibited ethical traits are respect and fairness. According to article Obama's Leadership & Character Traits Obama showed the first trait, respect, when he shared his views concerning diplomacy with Iran before he took office. He believed that we should recommence peace talks with Iran rather than pass a bill that would seek to label a group within their borders a terrorist threat which would lead us to locate troops near the Iranian border and escalate already heated tensions with Iran. Obama showed respect in this instance by believing that the past of an organization does not inherently infer that the organization should be disrespected by using force first rather than diplomacy. (Obama's Leadership & Character Traits, n.d.) The second ethical trait that Obama has shown is fairness. Even before Obama took office he worked and volunteered for organizations that sought to bring civil rights to a variety of disenfranchised minorities. Additionally, Obama has sought to ensure fairness by signing the Lily Ledbetter Act to help even the pay gap between women and men and fought to ensure big corporation were