ALCOHOLISM AND AN ETHICAL DILEMMA

When I first began my quest to become a police officer more than two decades ago, I passionately believed that one day I would achieve my goal. I also realized that once an officer, I would likely be ‘tested’ on many levels throughout my career. I have always admired strength of positive character in others and prided myself in having an almost iron-clad strength of character. During any officer’s career they will face instances where their character will be put to his or her owns personal and professional tests. It is not a matter of ‘if” but simply a matter of ‘when’ such dilemmas will occur. How will one handle that potentially pivotal juncture of one’s career? Will one have the appropriate ethical foundations to make the ‘right’ choices. How will one reconcile their choices? How does one minimize the emotional experience of uneasiness when there is a clash between two parallel principles that are conflicting – when one is experiencing a situation where one’s beliefs or assumptions may been seen as ‘wrong’.

Thanks to psychologist Leon Festinger, we now know this phenomenon as cognitive dissonance. What Festinger put forth was an outline for understanding ethical dilemmas as follows; “If a person holds two cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent, he experiences Dissonance: a negative drive state (not unlike hunger or thirst). Because the experience of dissonance is unpleasant, the person will strive to reduce it-usually by struggling to find a way to change one or both cognitions to make them more consonant with one another”. (Leon Festinger)

Festinger’s concept of cognitive dissonance is not completely original, it definitely has its roots in Austrian psychologists Fritz Heider notion of ‘balance theory’. Nonetheless, and unfortunately, I have had the misfortune to experience more than one ethical dilemma in my career. In the end, I have rarely regretted any path I chose. However, I found it no less difficult to minimize my own levels of cognitive dissonance with each respective dilemma, even in the absence of such eloquent clarity as provided by Heider, Festinger and other academics.

So then, what comes to mind as the foremost ethica