From Assessing to Exploring: Less Parent, More Adult in Ethical Reasoning?

Abstract

In this reflective essay, the author shares some thoughts on how his attitude to ethics changed radically during his years as a member and one of the cochairs of the International Transactional Analysis Association (ITAA) Ethics Committee. Being certified in both the psychotherapy and the organizational fields had already started him thinking in a new way about analyzing from a combination of the individual perspective and the systemic. Today, for him ethics is no longer about judging an individual’s errors but about understanding the thinking, feeling, and acting of (all) the people involved in an undesirable outcome. The author suggests that we need to do whatever it takes to see through, defuse, and fix the causes of ethical missteps. We need to understand what is not going well in a broader context in order to provide an adequate response. Only in this way can all those involved learn and the system within which the error was committed improve. A brief history of ethical thought and some TA perspectives are followed by reflections on the work of the ethics committee, and the essay ends with a summary of the work of Dekker, a forerunner in innovative thinking about ethics. (For the record: This reflection mainly contains the author’s view on recent developments and not necessarily the view of all members of the ITAA Ethics Committee.)

Keywords:

• Ethics
• morality
• culture
• virtues
• relativism
• absolutism
• postmodernism
• alterity
• autonomy
• homonomy

Disclosure statement

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Additional information

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes on contributors

Anne de Graaf

Anne de Graaf, MSc, is a Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst in the field of management and organizational development and a Certified Transactional Analyst in the field of psychotherapy. Anne was founder, trainer, and supervisor at the Dutch TA Academy and a teacher at the MSc Organizational TA program in the United Kingdom. He is currently the owner of RondHeel consultancy and training. He is a coauthor of Into TA: A Comprehensive Textbook on Transactional Analysis (2016), Einstein and the Art of Sailing (2010), and Managing Without Power (2024). He also coedited New Theory and Practice of Transactional Analysis in Organizations (2022). Anne can be reached at Moerasvaren 141, 3452 KC Vleuten, The Netherlands; email: [email protected].