You believe that no one ethical perspective provides the answers for every situation. Rather, as a person-in-community, you use both reason and experience to determine which of the various ethical priorities will provide the best guidance given the situation at hand.

With a center perspective, you have no preference (NP) between the value of rationality—following your head—and sensibility—following your heart. This balance suggests that, at your best, your emotions and experience are weighed against reason and careful thought before you take any action.

As you embrace the reflective process, some problems may prompt you to use the tools of rationality and think carefully, but in others, you let your emotions guide you. The flexibility can be advantageous, or it could leave you paralyzed, torn between conflicting demands of head and heart.

Your center perspective also shows that you have no preference (NP) between the value of autonomy—respecting the individual—over equality—giving priority to the group. This preference suggests that you see value both in individuals choosing their own path as well as the institutions of a stable community.

Whether you give deference to individuals or work to support the group will depend greatly on the situation. The only consistent fact is that you don’t rely on preexisting norms. Every situation is an opportunity for you to reassess the values and the behaviors and reasons for acting that would flow from the different value priorities and then to choose wisely.

The first step to ethical agility and maturity is to carefully read the description of your own ethical lens. While you may resonate with elements of other lenses, when you are under stress or pressure, you’ll begin your ethical analysis from your home lens. So, becoming familiar with both the gifts and the blind spots of your lens is useful. For more information about how to think about ethics as well as hints for interpreting your results, look at the information under the ELI Essentials and Exploring the ELI on the menu bar.

Over the course of history, four different ethical perspectives, which we call the Four Ethical Lenses, have guided people in making ethical decisions. Each of us has an inherited bias towards community that intersects with our earliest socialization. As we make sense of our world, we develop an approach to ethics that becomes our ethical instinct—our gut reaction to value conflicts. The questions you answered were designed to determine your instinctual approach to your values preferences. These preferences determine your placement on the Ethical Lens Inventory grid, seen on the right side of this page.

The dot on the grid shows which ethical lens you prefer and how strong that preference is. Those who land on or close to the center point do not have a strong preference for any ethical lens and may instead resonate with an approach to ethics that is concerned with living authentically in the world rather than one that privileges one set of values over another.

Each of the paragraphs below describes an ethical trait—a personal characteristic or quality that defines how you begin to approach ethical problems. For each of the categories, the trait describes the values you believe are the most important as well as the reasons you give for why you make particular ethical decisions.

To see how other people might look at the world differently, read the descriptions of the different ethical lenses under the tab Ethical Lenses on the menu bar. The “Overview of the Four Ethical Lenses” can be printed to give you a quick reference document. Finally, you can compare and contrast each ethical trait by reading the description of the trait found under the Traits menu. Comparing the traits of your perspective to others helps you understand how people might emphasize different values and approach ethical dilemmas differently.

As you read your ethical profile and study the different approaches, you’ll have a better sense of what we mean when we use the word “ethics.” You’ll also have some insight into how human beings determine what actions are—or are not—ethical.

This ethical perspective is called the Center Perspective because people with this focus occupy the center in the tension among the four core values, letting no value preference hold a predetermined or undue sway over their actions or define their ethical beliefs.

The Center Perspective represents the ethical perspective known as existentialism (or process thought), where you value personal freedom and authenticity above principles, values, or even specific goals imposed by society. From this perspective, you do not believe that any one set of principles, virtues, goals, or claims of justice will work for every situation and give the right answer. To act from your authentic self, you instead explore the context of the decision and then appropriately draw upon the other ethical theories to evaluate and test your choice, giving priority to no particular value.

On the ethical path of the Seeker, you seek to engage in life with open eyes and make choices in the moment that reflect personal freedom and with no preconceived notions about what action is or is not preferred. You begin from the awareness that your actions can be determined by your biology and biography—the way that you characterize your life and decisions.

As you use the Perspective of the Seeker, you pursue your quest for an authentic self. As you notice where your freedom is limited by your instinct and habits, you can draw on the preferences of the other ethical perspectives to make the very best choice in this particular moment in time.

Just as a set of glasses helps you see clearly where your vision is weakest, the Center Perspective helps you easily switch direction and focus. You can look around with clear sight before determining what guiding ethical norms are the most appropriate for your situation and will allow you to truly be yourself—to be authentic.

Using the glasses of the Center Perspective, you think of your ethical self as no different from your actual self. Those who favor other lenses use a hypothetical observer to remove themselves from the decision, or imagine an ideal version of themselves as a role model to live up to.

For the Center Perspective, however, the only self that matters is the true self—you, in your particular moment. Because every decision you make is evaluated from the perspective of the unique moment in time, you may seem inconsistent. You may begin by favoring the community in one case but start by advocating for individual rights in another. Or you might begin with rationally evaluating a situation in one instance but start by listening to your heart and considering your experiences in a different situation.

This ability to easily change perspective helps when you are talking with people who strongly identify with one ethical lens or another, because you can show them the other side. However, you can also get vertigo and become confused because you don’t have strong commitments to any of the four core values. In this situation, you risk following the crowd or unreflective ethical programming instead of acting from your authentic self.

As you seek ethical maturity, you should embrace sincerity, making decisions that reflect who you are—and taking responsibility for the choice. You seek to balance the conflicting values of head and heart, individual and group, recognizing that to cling to one value too tightly may force you to act inauthentically. Thus, even though your values priorities are more flexible than other lenses, you might seem inconsistent but you are not hypocritical. Your authentic self is complex and cannot be summed up by saying your head always trumps your heart or you always put the individual’s rights ahead of the community’s needs.

Because you intensely value your personal freedom, you take full accountability for your choices. You know that an act done from your authentic self cannot be denied or excused—you own your choices because you are your choices. You recognize that every situation may not have a single ‘right’ answer, but the situation has an answer that is right for you.

As you choose the most appropriate and ethical action, carefully considering the four core values of autonomy, equality, rationality, and sensibility, the Center Perspective provides an opportunity to pause, clean off your glasses, and make every attempt to see things clearly. This perspective allows you to both determine what action would be authentic for you as well as help create situations where others can also live from their core selves. This next section describes how you can use the Center Perspective and all four ethical lenses to resolve an ethical dilemma.

With no strong preference for rationality or sensibility, you can’t rely on either reason or passion to provide quick answers. Also, because you can see the point of view of both the individual and the community, you weigh the interests of yourself and other individuals with the concerns of the group. Being aware of your own beliefs, you carefully go through a decision-making process to ensure that you have a complete response to the problem. The advantage of this questioning approach is the ability to see the present situation clearly and thus be equipped to separate facts from assumptions and balance the competing ethical values as you choose a path forward.

Because you do not embrace concrete principles or goals from the center perspective, you can define your primary ethical task as reflecting on the situation. As you consider what is going on, you strive to eliminate as much illusion about yourself and others as possible and then freely choose to act.

As you make decisions about how you and other individuals can best live in community, your task is twofold: to know what is True and to seek that which is Good. From your place in the middle, as you consider your desires and responsibilities, you can also anticipate the response of others to your choice. By going through a reflective process, you can harmonize the search and bring forth a solution or approach that provides just the right balance for the problem at hand and thus finds the Beautiful.

Wisdom allows you to keep both your desires and the desires of the community in equilibrium through knowledge of both good and evil that has been gained in experience. While you haven’t lost your idealism, you are clear that all people and community organizations have ethical strengths and weaknesses and thus moderate your expectations.

In the center, you are comfortable using all available analytical tools to resolve a problem. You can draw on your reason and experience as well as the wisdom of experts and traditions of the community. Because your value preferences are truly balanced, all these tools will be equally easy for you to use.

Again, before you start, you must engage in the process of looking at your world and yourself as clearly as possible. An understanding of your authentic self will let you notice where your initial nudges to action come from biological instincts, cultural conditioning, or willful blindness that results in you choosing a path that confirms your own closely held opinions and beliefs rather than seeking what is authentic and true in the moment. Continuously testing your experience (what you notice going on in the world) against your reason (thinking critically to determine the truth) is a useful process for determining how you want to act.

As you ask, “What is an authentic, freely-chosen act?” you notice your first reaction to a situation and then determine whether you will continue on that path or choose differently. Because you value rationality and sensibility equally, you will be mindful of where you need to pay attention to contextual cues to help you choose your path forward. And, because you value autonomy and equality, you will strive to find a path forward that allows to you be an authentic and effective person-in-community.

As you expand your perspective to include others, you can begin considering questions from other lenses to arrive at the most authentic action for yourself. For instance, if someone asks for your help, you might ask: Do you have an agreement to honor? Do you have the ability to help yourself or someone else achieve their goals? Do you want to be known as a person who helps others when asked? Will the community as a whole be stronger if you help? Each of these questions from the other lenses helps you know when your response to the initial nudge coming from your unconscious should be “I will,” or when the response should be “I won’t.”

And then, as your perspective shifts to include all people and seek a greater purpose in life than only caring for yourself, you begin to find balance as you ask, “Am I mindfully aware of how I influence and am influenced by others?” Because you cannot know how other people will respond to your actions, you need to be mindful of the fact that your life will always have open-ended ambiguity. Those who demand certainty and black-and-white ethical solutions may not be at ease with you, because your perspective sees ethics as a process of determining how—in this moment—people can best live in community with each other.

You are more likely than those in other perspectives to explain your choices in terms of who you are and what you believe in. If your actions can justifiably be described as authentic to yourself, you will defend those actions.

At your best, your authentic self is more than just your early ethical imprinting (from biological impulses or community influence). Your authentic self takes elements from everything you have learned and the many influences throughout your life, as you consistently move toward maturity. Your authentic self also is mindful that others also desire to engage in a satisfying relationship with you, and so you work to honor them as individuals and support members of your community.

The strength of the Center Perspective is directly proportional to your willingness to see yourself and others clearly and compassionately. The human condition is one of bounded free will. Many of our impulses to action come from responses to prior experiences that we don’t even know we have turned into beliefs and rules for our life. Thus, each of the areas of strength listed below begins with a pause to determine what is really going on. Then you will be able to intentionally and appropriately use any of the other ethical navigational tools.

For those who view life from the middle, your gift to the community is balance: being able to understand all four ethical lenses. As you become empathetic, you are able to listen with compassionate ears to those who have strong opinions about what action is best. Finally, as you gain ethical maturity, you are able to find your own voice as you work to harmonize the diverse ethical positions held by others in the community.

Because you have a balanced commitment to all four core values—autonomy, equality, rationality, and sensibility—you strongly value harmony. Wherever possible, you look for ways that people can get along.

The Perspective of the Seeker involves recognizing the appropriate time and place for different secondary values. You can determine if the situation calls for being truthful (a value of the Rights/Responsibilities Lens), fairly administering rules (Relationship Lens), seeking to make a decision that respects everyone, (Results Lens), or embracing civility as you live into your role (Reputation Lens)—or, perhaps, all of the above. The danger is that, if you are not mindful, you may end up being pulled in every direction by changing winds instead of being truly authentic.

The challenge of viewing ethical concerns from the Center Perspective is perhaps greater than the challenge of viewing life from any of the other four perspectives. Because you have no preferred set of ethical values that claims your allegiance, the only course for correction is relentless, honest self-examination and self-knowledge. Because your ethical task is to live an authentic life, the Center Perspective calls you to carefully examine how your dispositions from birth, your habits of interacting with the world, and your unfounded beliefs shape your decisions and diminish your ability to be courageously authentic in this world.

With no particular preference for any of the four core values, you are quite vulnerable to the ethical blind spots of the Center Perspective that come from being directionless in your search for authenticity.

Using the eyeglasses of the Center Perspective to clearly see where you are not living into your authentic self helps you avoid ethical blind spots that come from a lack of self-understanding.

In the center, you can fall into the trap of any one of the blind spots described for the four primary ethical lenses. Without a strong commitment to telling the truth about yourself and others, you can devolve into unethical behavior—behavior that neither respects individuals nor builds thriving communities.

If you aren’t careful, complacency can become easy as you smugly believe that your balanced viewpoint allows you to see the problems in others, while leaving you unaware of ethical dangers. As you become ethically mature and attentive, consulting your reason and drawing on your experience, you can avoid your blind spots.

Because your perspective involves knowing yourself very well, you are able to overcome this blind spot. You must balance caring for yourself and responding appropriately to others—the essence of ethical behavior—as you choose your path forward.

Once you have identified a problem and have named the various factors that appear to cause the problem, you still need the courage to act. Because you can see everything, your problems may seem intractable and impossible to resolve—and so you end up doing nothing.

Even if your ethical maturity is strong, you may at times lack the courage of your convictions and avoid taking effective action. Your balanced values allow you to see the legitimacy of everyone’s point of view, which can make you prone to delay or outright inaction.

Humans are skilled at deflecting blame if caught being unethical—taking actions that do not live into their authentic selves and thus eroding trust in the community. As you view the world through the Center Perspective, you judge others by their own ethical consistency and authenticity.

This judgment can lead to a double standard as you expect others to have strong ethical positions while you hedge your bets, becoming comfortable with ambiguous statements that neither represent a consistent ethical perspective nor provide good reasons for your actions. If you aren’t careful to avoid this double standard, you will let others decide, then criticize the action if it backfires or say you agreed with it all along if it succeeds—both positions supported by your equivocating language.

While unethical action can come from being unaware, humans also have moral flaws that, if not acknowledged, may turn unethical choices into habits.

The Center Perspective requires constant self-examination and compels you to look at every decision from multiple angles. Without self-awareness, you may avoid engaging in the kind of disciplined thought that is required for good decision making. The effort required to truly know yourself and make ethical decisions may be daunting, but the benefit is a nuanced and balanced perspective that truly reflects your values.

As you continue to view life from the Perspective of the Seeker, you will at some point face a personal crisis as you acknowledge your inability to find balance among the values you prioritize.

Confronted with a difficult decision, one where you can see the merits of multiple options, you may become whipsawed and confused. The downside of being able to see everyone else’s perspective is that you can lose track of your own authentic center and believe that you have lost your moral compass. Taking a clear stand, based on your own evaluation of the situation, requires courage of action that can lead you away from the swamp of confusion.

Resolving ethical conflict is an ongoing as well as challenging task. Because our personal morals and community ethics come from our deeply held values, we must approach the problems mindfully. Great self-knowledge helps us identify the values that are in conflict. Listening respectfully to others as they express their preferred course of action based on their core values also helps. Seeking harmony between our personal expectations and the behavior that the community rewards enhances ethical effectiveness and leads to ethical maturity, the ability to live in personal integrity while respecting the value priorities of and caring for both other individuals and the community as a whole.

Ethical agility is measured by our ability to use all four ethical lenses effectively. We develop ethical agility as we practice looking at the world through different ethical lenses, become more aware of the places where we are tempted to be unethical, and remember to ask the core questions that define each ethical perspective.

Ethical courage involves not just analyzing and reflecting—but also taking action. Pausing to check a proposed action against the value priorities of the Center Perspective is a good final step for people from every ethical perspective. Using the checklist from each lens ensures a balanced decision, one that considers the core values and commitment of each lens.

• Notice your immediate response to the situation. Name the response as accurately as possible—even if the response is not positive.
• Pause and become aware of your intuitive nudge toward action. Don’t initially act upon the nudge or even judge whether it’s right or wrong.
• Test your intuitive nudge against the aspirational values of the other ethical lenses. What action will get mutually good results? What action will be a caring response? How can you care for those without power? What action will allow you to demonstrate excellence in your role?
• Choose the path forward that allows you to act courageously from your authentic self.

As you become skilled at using your ethical glasses to identify the ideal principles that guide you on your path, you will find yourself in good company with others who follow the Perspective of the Seeker on their journey through life.

Ethical agility is the ability to use all four ethical lenses—and the center perspective—effectively. You become more ethically agile as you practice looking at the world through different ethical lenses, become more aware of the places where you are tempted to be unethical, and remember to ask the core questions that define each ethical perspective.

As you read about different approaches to ethics, you can pick up the subtle clues to other people’s ethical perspectives by the words they choose to describe the problems and the reasons for their proposed course of action. To learn more about the other ethical lenses, read the information about each ethical lens under the tab Ethical Lenses on the menu bar or review the descriptions of the ethical traits for each lens under the tab Traits. You can also print the document “Overview Four Ethical Lenses” found under the Ethical Lens tab to have a quick reference guide to all four ethical perspectives.

Each ethical lens has a unique perspective on both the way to solve a problem as well as the specific characteristics of the most appropriate solution. To learn more about how each ethical perspective approaches ethical dilemmas, click Lens in the top navigation bar and read through the descriptions of each ethical lens.

Ethical agility is the first step towards ethical maturity, a life-long process of becoming ever more self-aware and learning how to move with dignity and grace in our community. As we move from fear into confidence, from thinking only of our self to considering others and the community as a whole, we gain ethical wisdom—a primary task of life as we seek that which is True and Good to find the Beautiful.

If you want to learn more about the how to understand and effectively use your ethical profile, please refer to The Ethical Self, by Catharyn Baird and Jeannine Niacaris (2016).