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Resolving ethical dilemmas is a matter of developing our practical wisdom

Drawing on Martin Hoffman’s empathy-based information-processing model, Lefkowitz (2021) suggests five paradigmatic forms of ethical dilemma. These forms are content-free and independent of the contexts within which ethical dilemmas occur. Lefkowitz reports that fewer than one third (30.9%) of the dilemmatic situations that were provided by the surveyed respondents were resolved positively, and about the same number were resolved negatively (31.7%). Given the mostly applied composition of the surveyed sample (54.9% of all respondents), it is evident that industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology practitioners urgently need training in resolving ethical dilemmas at work. Lefkowitz (2021) conceptually delineated the ethical dilemmas that I-O psychologists face but did not address how to resolve them. For example, how are I-O psychologists to connect the three metadimensions (justice, welfare, and virtue), the ethical principles of the APA, and the unique contexts of each ethical dilemma they find themselves in? Lefkowitz calls this missing connection a “conceptual deficiency.” He suggests that the five paradigmatic forms can help us successfully connect the abstract normative principles and the idiosyncratic ethical dilemmas of everyday professional practice. Lefkowitz goes on to explore the formal dimension of ethical dilemmas with its motivational, cognitive, emotional, evaluative, prescriptive, and stressor elements but, again, does not explain how we are to operationalize and use the elements to resolve the pressing ethical dilemmas in our practice. In this commentary I would like to extend Lefkowitz’s (2021) analysis with a discussion about resolving ethical dilemmas. Specifically, I strive to emphasize the roles of practical wisdom and professional education as prerequisites for successfully resolving ethical dilemmas. I also turn to the classics and moral philosophy where the topic of ethical dilemmas naturally resides. Alasdair MacIntyre, one of the most influential moral philosophers of the 20th century, once commented that if two volumes were published, the first containing the entire preceding philosophical literature concerning ethical dilemmas from Plato to W. D. Ross and the second devoted to publications on ethical dilemmas in the last 30 years, the second volume would be by far the