Do You Need To Choose Between Ethics And Bottom Line?
There are numerous different ways of defining “success” in business and employment, with perhaps the most obvious way being one’s bottom line. The richest business people and practitioners in the world might not necessarily be the most skilled, the best employers, or the most innovative, but it’s a fair bet that they don’t much care about that when they look at their bank balance.
What is a matter of some debate is the question of whether it is possible to make a lot of money and remain ethical. Without seeking to address political arguments, it is a question that you may need to ask yourself if you have ambitions to achieve something in your field of work. At the end of the day, when you look at yourself in the mirror, do you have to choose between your ethics and your bottom line?
Law: Can you make a good living and do good at the same time?
It is many parents’ dearest wish that their children become lawyers, primarily because it is always seen as a position of repute. There is no doubt that certain areas of law practice are more lucrative than others, but if you are skilled enough in this field you can be confident of getting to the top one way or another. If you want to focus on ethics, then areas such as human rights and medical law are a good place to start – building up contacts with patients’ representatives and the likes of https://www.recordrs.com will help you build a positive reputation that could see you make partner at a respected firm.
Medicine: Can you build your bank balance and rebuild lives?
It’s unavoidably true that, at least in the early days, being a doctor is a vocation more than a job. Interns leave medical school with mountains of debt, and even as they make their way up to attending doctors they are typically still paying that off. In truth, it’s hard to ever get rich from being a doctor if you want to help the neediest patients – as this sobering article from https://www.kevinmd.com illustrates – and doctors are often advised to “become comfortable with debt”. The bottom line is, if you want to get rich, you’ll need to become a consultant.
Entrepreneurship: Can you enrich yourself and society at the same time?
Success as an entrepreneur has rarely, if ever, been something that most people associate with ethical propriety. For sure, the wealthiest business people tend to have their own charitable foundations and it is expected that, once you hit a certain level of wealth, you become a philanthropist. However, in the modern age, it’s increasingly expected that you put something back while you are making money, and not just once you’ve accumulated it. This isn’t to put a dampener on anyone’s dreams of becoming wealthy; it is, in fact, an opportunity – if you follow the right ethical principles, you can attract a lot of business from an ever more ethically-conscious customer base.
It’s not impossible to keep your ethics front and center and make good money at the same time – but it’s not easy either, so you need to be prepared to put the work in.