Another text on the theme of the importance of humanizing public services and institutions? Yes, because it seems to me that an important angle has not been addressed, that of the influence of popular language on ethical action.
Our public institutions have codes of ethics, ethics or conduct which are supposed to guide organizations and people in the accomplishment of the various missions of the State, both in health and in education or even in the ecological transition. . Ethics, in its foundation, aims precisely to preserve the necessary element of humanity in decision-making, to not lose sight of the Other, for whose benefit a decision must be taken. How then can we explain the repeatedly proven lack of humanity?
Words neither “good” nor “bad”
Part of the answer appears to me to lie in the adoption of the lexicon taught in management and public administration, which is fueled by key words such as “efficiency”, “optimization” and “innovation”. All words that contain no ethical or moral component: they are neither “good” nor “evil”. Neutral, they contain no world view. They remain impervious to ethics.
Over the past decades, in the lexicon of public organizations, in addition to effectiveness, efficiency and innovation, the notion of customer has crept in and then imposed itself. Even if the terms “users” in health, “students” in education and “citizens” in environment and land use planning are maintained, when we dig a little, and not very far from the surface, the client reappears: vulnerable clientele , special needs, customer service.
Who says customer says transaction; the transactional posture is not without consequences in spheres of life where relationships marked – or lacking – humanity have an impact. We no longer know what a person is.
Ethics as a guide
What about our interpretation of ethics? In fact, it must be admitted, ethics “does not have a good reputation”, because when do we talk about ethics? We talk about ethics when there has been a fault, a breach or even when a person decides to file a complaint. Seen from this angle, ethics becomes synonymous with misconduct, breach of protocol, blame. We reduce ethics, seen as a problem, to very little, forgetting that it serves as a guide to doing good. We no longer know what ethics is.
Finally, there are the paradoxical injunctions inherent in processes and protocols where we attempt to bring effectiveness, efficiency and time to coexist with fairness, dignity and respect. Knowing that the majority of people who work in our public institutions want to do their job well and avoid reprimands, can we be surprised that we come to apply the rules like an automaton and that, as a result, we respect the rules more? process than people?
It is this flaw – which makes it confusing to respect a process (to respectthat is to say following him, obeying him, conforming to him) with respecting people (which consists of taking a step back and giving them a second look) – that the lack of humanity germinates then that lack of ethics emerges. We no longer know what respect is.
We must constantly remind ourselves: ethics is a reflection that allows us to decide accurately in the face of uncertainty. That is to say where processes and protocols do not provide answers, where, if applied as intended, they will prove unfair, inhumane. In a world governed by processes and protocols, it is urgent to remember to think, then to correct the lexicon that makes us lose sight of the Other as a person. It is urgent to change the way we look at ethics in order to reinstill humanity into our relationships, because, at first glance, it seems that we no longer know what humanity is.