This summer I'm reading Barry L. Padgett's Professional Morality and Guilty Bystanding: Merton's Conjectures and the Value of Work. I'm going to be using it in my business ethics class this fall. While teaching the course last semester, I discerned that I needed a "formation" component to the course - that is, I felt the students needed to be coaxed out of their "business" mindset and invited to reflect upon who they are and what is important to them.

One of the favorite buzz phrases in business these days is "thinking outside the box." It is so ubiquitous among business students that I am tempted to ban its use from my classroom. It is a vanity, really, because people use the phrase to flatter themselves that they are "thinking outside the box" when really they are doing nothing of the sort.

Truly thinking outside the box requires profound self-knowledge of the Socratic sort. At one point Padgett notes, "self-reflection is a necessary component of living a moral life at all" (p. 107). I was so excited to read this sentence, as it expresses something that I've known all along and was not quite able to articulate. If we are going to go beyond mere compliance and become truly moral, we need not just to know the ethical theories and apply them to case studies, we need not just to memorize the four Franciscan principles of Marian University. We need to engage in deep and life-long self-reflection; we need to be open to what we learn from that reflection; and then we must act accordingly.

I'm looking forward to offering my students an adventure in self-knowledge this fall.

Padgett, Barry L. Professional Morality and Guilty Bystanding: Merton's Conjectures and the Value of Work. Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009.