Making ethical decisions in your personal life will help you make ethical decisions in your professional life.  Ethical and unethical behaviours tend to be consistent.  In addition, ethics can and do become better and stronger with repeated ethical decisions and actions.  Being around people who have good values and seeing ethical actions take place, make people stronger and more willing to take ethical actions.

People’s decisions influence their actions.  Their decisions and actions become habits and their habits contribute to their reputation.  All these combined make up their character.  The more often people make ethical decisions, the easier they are to make.  The reverse is unfortunately also true.  The more often people make unethical decisions, the easier it is to make them again.  They also become habits and build a bad character.

In Stephen Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People the second habit is “Begin with the end in mind”.  Think about how your daily decisions and actions will build your reputation.  At the end – your retirement – what will people say about your career?  You might want them to say that you were competent at your job, were fair, honest, and compassionate in your relationships with customers and colleagues.  That you were of great value to the organisation and that you will be missed.