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For every person, there are certain ethics that they will follow because ethics are the make of every person. If a person starts to question his/her ethics, that means the person may be questioning themselves to be a good person or not; or it could be the person questioning his/her ethics vs. a businesses ethics. In either case the ethics should not conflict against each other, usually when ethics are questioned in any case there is something wrong.
A person's personal ethics & business ethics will be different. A person may not question doing something extra for them because his/her personal ethics may not be in conflict with the situation, however his/her business ethics may have a conflict with the situation. At a business (work) a person's business ethics are usually what the person feels is the right approach to all situations. A person's personal ethics may be in conflict with his/her business ethics at times due to one set of ethics is usually converted from the other set of ethics.
An example of a conflict of ethics would be if a person at a business starts to cover a problem up by him/herself without telling anyone. A person's personal ethics usually would be to see why the person is doing such a thing, however a person's business ethics usually would be to stop the person from covering the problem up. The problem could be missing money or even missing product, in this case it doesn't matter.
To make it easier we will say that it is missing money. If money was going missing for an unknown explanation, one of the employees that are responsible may try to cover it up. In this case the person doesn't know if someone is stealing the money, however the person doesn't want to have someone above him or her to find out, so he/she covers the loss with his or her own money. This person is using more of their personal ethics than they are his/her business ethics. The person is more fearful that they are going to be held responsible for the loss, so they are replacing it now before someone finds out and has this situation cost him/her a job. Depending on the person, the job could be something that they cannot afford to lose.
If a person uses his/her personal ethics & business ethics equally as a way to determine how to deal with a situation, he/she will always be in a battle within his/her own mind. It is always good to have the two sets of ethics setup, however to have them always battling each other will cause a person to second-guess everything that the person does. When a person second-guesses him/herself in a situation, the person will find that he/she is receiving a little bit more stress due to the situation. If a person is not sure what to do in a situation that his/her ethics are involved, that means that the person is either not sure which set of ethics to deal with, or the person hasn't been in the type of situation that has just happened. A robbery is a good example of this, however it is not a pleasant thing to happen though. If you are robbed you will automatically call the police to come down (this is standard). A person that has never been robbed before will start to panic, and his/her business ethics will start to apply more (whether the robbery happened at work or home). The person will explain the situation to his/her best ability to the police without question of what happened. The person may say things that do not apply to the situation because they are starting to panic. However if the person had been robbed before, the person's personal ethics will take control and try to make a conflict with the business ethics of the person. Thoughts that the business may hold you responsible will float around, and if you are the only person around when the robbery happened, your personal ethics may tempt a person to lie to the police about what happened. If you saw nothing, you may make up a description so that you can look a bit better. This is never good.
The bad thing about a conflict of ethics is that a person will start second-guessing him/herself a lot more until that conflict is over. With most cases, a conflict of ethics causes more harm than good and the person will usually have to go through counseling to recover from the situation.
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