Integrity and Ethics in the CIA

Introduction

There has been a major concern about some organizations such as CIA on their ethical and integrity of the organizations. The organization has been accused of many unethical practices such as torture. The concerns are how the CIA goes about their work to accomplish their mission. The CIA is at the moment engaging its self improving its ethical issues. Ethics involves the administration or the organization as well as the personal issues. For the agency to be successful in integrating ethics into the working of the organization, the operating culture of the organization must be evaluated and changed. There must be discussions and debates on the CIA ethics right from the staff, senior management and the whole population.

Ebout Ethical Standards in Organization Such as the CIA

Some of the challenges that face an organization such as the CIA in compliance to ethical standards include the legal constraints as written by Lynn Sharp Paine , "Even in the best cases, legal compliance is unlikely to unleash much moral imagination or commitment. The law does not generally seek to inspire human excellence or distinction" the rules and legal complications at times pose a great challenge to ethics application in organizations as it provides a rigid system in the organization of how it function. An organization that is created with the legal compliance in mind may at times ignore the fact that, at times what maybe legal may be ethically not be correct.

Other challenges to integrity and ethics in the CIA include: the CIA core and guiding values have become clouded by the Cold War and what became of its aftermath. There is also lack of open discussions in the agency, in the CIA it is believed that open debates and dissidents are discouraged hence less or no people will be able to speak about ethical challenges they undergo while undertaking their duties as agent of the Agency.

There other reason for lack of ethics in the CIA is the inability of the Agency to accept failure. Failure in the CIA is unacceptable outcome thus members of the agency are ready to go all the way and engage themselves in unethical practices so as to avoid the risk of failing, and later cover up for what they did. The other contributors of unethical practices in the CIA include the belief within the agency that promotions are made to the people who have acted unethically. This discourages other members of the CIA from acting ethically.

Ethical Essay Summary

The CIA and other government agencies have no choice but to act with integrity as their actions have a lot of implications to a lot of people. Unethical acts perpetrated by organizations such as the CIA will lead to high human suffering, ignoring of human right and injustice. Acceptance of ethical practices in these organizations is crucial for all.