What decision would I make if I knew that my actions would be on the front page of tomorrow’s Washington Post? (The "Washington Post" Test)
- Capt. Marc Hedhal
The Washington Post Test: Integrity’s Last Stand unpublished paper presented
at the Joint Service Conference on Professional Ethics, January
2002.
“A
man can be … in every way corrupt and be a brilliant mathematician, or a great
painter, but there’s one thing he can’t be and that is a good soldier”
-- Gen Sir John Hackett, British Army (Retired)
General Hackett’s
remarks were echoed when General Fogelman, former Chief of Staff of the Air
Force, stated in 1995 that integrity was one of the “prices of admission” to
the Air Force. ...
From Part 7: Moral Decision Support for the Warfighter
ACDIS Occasional Paper: BEYOND PRECISION: Issues of Morality and Decision Making in Minimizing Collateral Casualties
...Edwards and von Winterfeldt also assert that intellectual
tools can play an important role in dispelling what they call “cognitive
illusions.”[166] Such tools exist in the area of applied
ethics in the form of tests. One of the more common tests is known as
the “Washington Post Test.” Hedhal
advocates this test for use by military personnel in particular because
of its emphasis on the public servant’s obligation to maintain the public’s
trust.[167] Implementing
the test requires the users to ask themselves: “What decision would I
make if I knew that my actions would be on the front page of tomorrow’s Washington
Post?”...
.
This is the Avenue to Success
for 09/07/08
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