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Ethics, Integrity and

Aptitude for Civil Services
By Gautam Meena

Paper Overview
• This paper will include questions to test the candidates’ attitude and approach to issues
relating to integrity, probity in public life and his problem solving approach to various
issues and conflicts faced by him in dealing with society. Questions may utilise the case
study approach to determine these aspects. The following broad areas will be covered.
• Ethics and Human Interface: Essence, determinants and consequences of Ethics in human
actions; dimensions of ethics; ethics in private and public relationships. Human Values –
lessons from the lives and teachings of great leaders, reformers and administrators; role of
family, society and educational institutions in inculcating values.
• Attitude: content, structure, function; its influence and relation with thought and behaviour;
moral and political attitudes; social influence and persuasion.
• Aptitude and foundational values for Civil Service , integrity, impartiality and non-
partisanship, objectivity, dedication to public service, empathy, tolerance and compassion
towards the weaker-sections.
• Emotional intelligence-concepts, and their utilities and application in administration and
governance.
• Contributions of moral thinkers and philosophers from India and world.
• Public/Civil service values and Ethics in Public administration: Status and problems; ethical
concerns and dilemmas in government and private institutions; laws, rules, regulations and
conscience as sources of ethical guidance; accountability and ethical governance;
strengthening of ethical and moral values in governance; Ethical issues in international
relations and funding; corporate governance.
• Probity in Governance: Concept of public service; Philosophical basis of governance and
probity; Information sharing and transparency in government, Right to Information, Codes
of Ethics, Codes of Conduct, Citizen’s Charters, Work culture, Quality of service delivery,
Utilization of public funds, challenges of corruption.
• Case Studies on above issues.
Ethics
• Ethics is a set of standards that society places on itself. They help us decide what is right and
what is wrong.
• Basically they focus on conduct or actions of individuals. Ethics is defined by society and not
individually.
• Also, being ethical is not same as doing whatever society wants. In many societies, most
accepted standards are ethical. But in some societies most accepted standards may not be
ethical. An entire society can become corrupt. Ex: Nazi Germany.
Morals
• Morals also relate to right or wrong conduct. While ethics is provided by an external source,
like societies, institutions etc., morals are individual’s own principles regarding right and
wrong.

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• Morals emerge from religion. Thus ethics is dependent on others for definition while morals
stem from inside.

Ethics vs Morals
• Morals and ethics are usually congruent with each other as an individual is part of this
society only. But sometimes, morals may come in conflict with ethics. Ex: Defence lawyer for
a terrorist.

Integrity
• It is a concept of consistency of thoughts, words, deeds, and duties. Choosing the right,
regardless of the consequence, is the hallmark of integrity. Integrity is choosing your
thoughts and actions based on values rather than personal gain.
• People of integrity are trustworthy because they base their decisions on moral and ethical
principles, not on convenience.
• Integrity enabled the official to do the right and legal thing with conviction and ensure that
it sees logical end.
Integrity
• In this era of social media and information flow an upright official with integrity will inspire
many and there will be a popular support to the action of such an officer.
• In public service it is said that one’s reputation precedes oneself. So the quality of an official
having high integrity will be well known to those who approach him.
• Character and integrity are more often demonstrated by the way we handle day to day
relationship questions than by any heroic acts of courage.
How to inculcate integrity
• Through training.
• Through institutional structure such as laws, rules and regulation. 2nd ARC recommends
setting up code of ethics for all departments of the government. Ex: Speaker will monitor
how many times parliament was disrupted, a committee will monitor it and report will be
published.
• Select random officer and try to bribe him. This is not same as CBI/ACB raid, they want to
flush out corrupt people. But integrity testing is done to establish honesty.
• If young recruit’s first posting is made under honest officer, then he’s more like to remain
honest for the rest of his life because of mentoring by a good role model.
Integrity
• Some of the civil servants suffered due to integrity are Ashok Khemka, S. Manjunath, Durga
Shakti Nagpal, etc.
• However, integrity brought respect for civil servants like TN Seshan, Armstrong Pame, etc.
Late officer SR Sankaran was rightly called “an ideal people’s IAS officer”. He was
responsible for abolition of bonded labour.
• Gandhi mis-spelt the word ‘kettle’ when an English education instructor asked students of
Gandhi’s class to write the word. Despite class teacher insistence, Gandhi did not correct the
word and maintained his honesty.
• Gandhi organised workers of Ahmedabad mill against the the owners, who were helping
Gandhi to run the Sabarmati Ashram, without the fear that such aid may discontinue. This
shows integrity on part of Gandhi.
• Politicians being public representatives must practise high standards of morality and
integrity. But these politicians often get caught in corruption cases, dowry harassment, etc.
Aptitude
• Latin Word “Aptus” meaning fitness or adeptness.

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• Innate, inborn potential. But not cast in stone. It can be from nature, it can be nurtured.
• Associated with competence.
• It determines whether Person will develop the skills to perform a particular task?
• Examples of aptitude
• Quantitative aptitude
• Verbal aptitude
• Reasoning aptitude
• Finger dexterity
• Visual memory
• Both physical and mental. E.g.
• To become an officer in defence or police services, you need to have both physical and
mental aptitude.
• Aptitude of hand and eye coordination : Good cricketer.
• In India, most people pickup profession without seeing whether they’ve the ‘aptitude’ for it
or not?
• They choose a profession by chance and not choice.
• So, they make a living from their career, but don’t derive job-satisfaction e.g. Most
Engineers, pharmacist and IT graduates.
• A Civil servant must have 3 aptitudes
• Intellectual aptitude.
• Emotional aptitude.
• Moral aptitude.

Ethics and Human interface

• Three Parts:
• Types of Judgments, Pre-requisite for Ethical scrutiny, Meta Ethics, Applied ethics,
Normative-Descriptive ethics.
• Theories of Ethics: virtual ethics, deontological vs. teleological ethics, utilitarianism,
hedonism, epicureanism, egoism, conduct ethics etc.
• Values, Role of family-society-educational institutions in inculcating values, ethics and
private and public relationships.

3 Types of Judgments
Factual or • Earth rotates around the Sun.
Epistemological • There are only two outcomes: True / False
• They’re not morally right or wrong. They’re
morally empty, they’re “amoral”.

Aesthetic • Concept of beauty, taste, color, sensualities.

Judgment • One person may like red color the other person
may like blue color.

Moral • Our sense of good/bad/right/wrong.

Judgment • In ethics paper, we are concerned with this.

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Meta-Ethics / Critical Ethics

• Cheating, is it “good” thing? That is an example of ethical question.
• What is “good”? That is meta-ethical question. In other words, Meta-ethics is one ‘step’
above ethics.
• If you begin evaluating the ethics itself, then it’s meta-ethics.
• Similarly morality =>ethics => meta-ethics.

Applied Ethics
Bioethics Stem cell therapy, Gene cloning, GM crops etc., are they
good or bad?
Environmental ethics Cutting trees and displacing the tribal for highway
projects is good or bad?

Normative vs. Descriptive Ethics

Descriptive Normative / prescriptive
Einstein’s equation is E=MC^2 Should we use that equation or knowledge to build
nuclear weapon?
Newton’s third law: action and reaction are Should we use Newton’s third law to build a rocket or a
opposite. gun?
It describes “this is what’s happening.” It prescribes “what should be done or what ought to be
done.”
• e.g. In imperialist age, white men In the Imperialist age, white men enslaved Africans
enslaved Africans. and sold them to American plantation owners, wherein
• However, Abraham Lincoln they’re exploited in the most inhuman manner.
abolished slavery so Mr. ABC historian It was wrong on part of the White men to exploit other
lauds him an ethical president. humans for personal gains. No one should enslave
• However, Lincolns’ motive to another human being.
abolish slavery was to win the war
against confederates, rather than
‘freeing’ black people so Mr. XYZ
Historian in his XYZ book doesn’t
concur with the views of Mr. ABC.
As you can see, only ‘describing’, rather As you can see- “prescribing” about what should have
than prescribing. been done.
• Examples of Normative theories:
• Virtue ethics theory, the views of Plato and
Aristotle
• Utilitarianism
• Nishkam Karmayoga (Gita)

Ethics vs. Morality

• Subject matter of Physics = Natural phenomenon. It studies nature and derives formulas.
• So subject matter “nature”=> its study is called “physics”.
• Same way subject matter “morality” => its study is called “ethics”.

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Legality vs. Morality

Legality Morality
Gay marriage is illegal Perhaps in some ethical school of thought, gay
marriage could be considered ethical because
everyone has ‘right’ to have a life partner to provide
him/her emotional support.
Every illegal thing may not be immoral Every moral things may not be legal. If we make ‘lying’
illegal, then everyone will be jailed.
One and same throughout the Varies from culture, religion and region.
region/nation
Murder is illegal Murder is immoral so its in the ‘intersecting’ region of
legality and morality.

Preconditions for Ethical Scrutiny

• Free Will
• In Delhi zoo, a mentally instable person falls in Tiger enclosure. The white tiger kills him,
while the crowd was busy capturing the MMS video of the event.
• If a person has multiple choices, and freedom to pick one within those choices, only then we
can debate it on ethical ground.
• When that white tiger killed the mentally instable man, Tiger didn’t have ‘free will’ or
‘knowledge’. Nature has designed tiger to act that way. Hence tiger’s action can’t be judged
as ethical or immoral. He can’t /shouldn’t be punished for that.
• While crowd’s action can be termed as unethical- because they had ‘free will’: Option A-
help the person or option B- record MMS on mobile. They chose option A, hence unethical.
• Knowledge
• A Child takes “iPhone 15 pro max” from table and dips it in a fishbowl. Phone is
permanently damaged. Was Child’s action unethical?
• Well, Child had ‘free will’- (A) Take selfie and upload on facebook (B) dip it in a fishbowl
• She chose option B. But she didn’t have the ‘knowledge’ that iPhone are not waterproof.
• We cannot exercise ‘free will’ in an ethical/unethical manner, unless and until we have
‘knowledge’ of its consequence. Hence baby’s action can’t be termed as ethical or unethical.

Preconditions for Ethical Scrutiny

Fear / violence • If someone tries to kill/loot you and you kill/injure
him in self-defence, you’re acting under fear for your
life. So, it’s subject to legal scrutiny but not ethical
scrutiny. Because it was ‘either you or him’.
Ignorance • Foreigner comes to Gujarat and drinks . This is illegal
but not ‘unethical’ IF the foreigner was unaware of
the prohibition law in Gujarat.

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Passion • A husband finds his wife in a compromising position

with another man, he gets enraged and murders both
of them. Illegal but difficult to scrutinize on ‘ethical’
grounds, since his passion was not aroused by
himself.
• A man takes narcotic drugs and under its influence he
rapes/murders/maims someone, it is both illegal and
unethical because he himself aroused his ‘passion’.
• Hence, In murder cases, court looks at aggravating
and mitigating factors.

Preconditions for Ethical Scrutiny

Pathological Status • Husband suffering from schizophrenia mistreats his
wife/children.
• This is not subject to ethical scrutiny because he’s
suffering from a mental disorder so he lacks the
“knowledge” and “free will”.
• Same way the ‘mistake’ of mentally instable person
falling in tiger enclosure in Delhi is, is beyond ethical
scrutiny.
Habit, Temperament • Since childhood, Japanese are trained to apologize
profusely even for slightest mistake or discomfort
caused to another human.
• If an American executive working in Japan, doesn’t
behave in similar fashion, it can’t be termed as
‘unethical’. Because its not in American habits.
Value System • A fallen Samurai would prefer to commit ‘ritual
suicide’ (seppuku) rather than suffering
torture/humiliation by his enemies. Because it is part
of his Bushido honour code.
• If a fallen American soldier doesn’t commit suicide, it
can’t be evaluated on ethical grounds.

Pre-conditions for Ethical Scrutiny

Action Component
Mr.X Moral Agent
He killed Mr.Y Human Action. (Recall 3 types of assumptions: if he had done
with out free will, knowledge and voluntary action, we’d
have called it “non-human” action and topic would end here.

Mr.X’s action is morally wrong. Moral Judgment. (Recall 3-types of Judgments-factual,

aesthetic and moral)
It is wrong to murder another Moral Standard=> Ethics => Meta-Ethics.
human

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No person shall be deprived of his Article 21, Constitution of India

life or personal liberty except
according to procedure
established by law.
Whoever commits murder shall be Section 302, Indian Penal Code (IPC)
punished with death, or
imprisonment for life, and shall
also be liable to fine.

Case Study
• In the movie “ABC”, - Mr. X suffers from short-term memory loss. Following people take
advantage of his mental conditions:
• A waitress: By making Mr. X kill her abusive boyfriend after court and police fails to give
her protection or justice.
• A Cop: By making Mr. X kill various criminals for cleansing the society as well as looting the
money from dead corpses. He uses this money to tip-off informants and fight against crime.
• A motel-receptionist: By charging Mr. X multiple rooms not used by him, because
receptionist’s boss had ordered him to increase revenue by doing so, else threatened to fire
him from job. This receptionist has a daughter for marriage and a son in expensive coaching
at Jammu so he can’t afford to lose job.
• In above case, whose action(s) is/are subject to ethical scrutiny? If yes, then are they ethical
or unethical?
• Mr. X
• Waitress
• Cop
• Motel receptionist

Case Study
• Some criminals inject Mr. X with a synthetic drug which inhibits the flow of adrenaline,
slowing the heart and eventually killing the victim. Mr. X enters a hospital trying to explain
his condition to staff but nurses refuse to believe him and doctor says he’d need to run 24
hours medical tests before giving him any drug, despite repeated requests by Mr. X that he
requires immediate shot of Adrenaline. Impatient Mr. X breaks into the storeroom and tries
to steal vials containing synthetic adrenaline, so he can inject them to survive. But the staff
and policemen try to apprehend him. Mr. X fights back, injures a few of them before
escaping the hospital. In above case, whose action(s) is/are subject to ethical scrutiny? If
yes, then are they ethical or unethical?
• Mr. X
• Nurses
• Doctor
• Policemen

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