In reflecting on my core values, a dilemma arises in identifying them as such. More exactly, such values are so deeply ingrained within us, we usually do not consciously consider them. Making the effort, however, reveals several basics to me, all of which are related to one another. Beyond any other value, I esteem and try to maintain what has always been the primary ethic of the medical community: first, do no harm. I believe this is a value often not fully appreciated by many, because it is ordinary to think of a value as necessarily an active force or quality.

In my thinking, however, the commitment to never do harm exists as a moral compass and a fundamental means of understanding every situation I encounter. Events large and small occur, I am enabled to respond to them in varying ways, but it is crucial that I realize anything I do has impacts and that those impacts cannot be permitted to cause or worsen the situation. Personally, I have always found this to be a practical and efficient value; it prevents me from acting on impulse in any circumstance because it reinforces the innate responsibilities of human behavior, and compels me to more fully understand that to which I respond before doing so. This then generates or supports a value of beneficence, in that I seek to act in ways only improving circumstances around me, and as they inevitably affect others. The key here, in my perceptions, is that both core values apply to anything in my life at all, from conversation with a friend or an opportunity to assist an individual, to a social cause.

For myself and others, I believe values both evolve and sometimes shift in emphasis. We acquire them through filtering experience and deciding upon a “rightness” to them, and, when the values become central to who we are, they are the usually unconscious guides to behavior and perception. This being the case, real change exists only in the degree to which we apply them. In a very real sense, moving through life translates to a consistent testing of our values and, more importantly, a testing of how committed we are to them. For example, it is relatively easy to set aside the value of not doing harm when a minor situation allows for us to gain something at minimal cost to others. Such minor circumstances, however, are the real proving grounds of values because genuine principles cannot be qualified based on conditions.

This reality then exposes the likely problem that, when people change their values, they do so because they are abandoning them for convenience or gain. This is a human mechanism and I am vulnerable to it, but it must be resisted if we are to maintain our fundamental senses of who we are. Those senses are what values provide. It is no small consideration. We define ourselves in multiple ways, but the most basic definition of the human being ultimately lies in how they treat others and, again, in circumstances large and small. Essentially, the more we adhere to those vales in which we most strongly believe, the more we are provided with an identity we desire.

Not unexpectedly, the workplace may be the greatest challenge environment to values, if only because the setting is so routine, we allow it to change our understandings of basic realities. In ordinary life, I hold to treating all equally, or try to do so. The workplace, however, is based on a hierarchy in which ranks dictates treatment, or greatly influences the degrees of courtesy we extend to others. Personally, my response to this is “reverse rank”; that is, if I am expected to be overtly considerate to work superiors, I then seek to behave with all others to that same level of consideration. I do not always succeed, but I am confident that my motives and efforts remain true to the goal. In my own experience, in fact, this values-based approach produces tangible results. Consideration, in a sense, perpetuates itself because those treated with respect are all the more encouraged to treat others the same way. In the workplace, this generates a culture beyond the corporate; it creates an atmosphere that is genuinely positive and mutually gratifying.

A further consideration regarding values in the workplace relates to how they inevitably reflect ideas of justice at the most elemental level. Any value upholding consideration of others translates to principles of justice, if only because the law and the courts exist to define and regulate the ways justice itself applies to our lives. If the systems are usually reactive in addressing violations of ethics, they nonetheless affirm the underlying values in the process. As I see it, justice is a concept or reality within all human interaction. It infuses every workplace, from the police station and courthouse to the manufacturing plant, and because it is a measure of how we treat one another and, in plain terms, a moral imperative apart from other values. To be a human being in a civilized society equates to understanding and accepting that behavior must be, in every occasion, just because justice involves using reason and compassion simultaneously. This then underscores how there is a kind of universality in core values, as a rule, and how my own are by no means removed from the “basics.” In my life and perception, we cannot serve justice without recognizing that it itself relies on primal qualities of the humane in behavior, and this is within the foundation of my own core values.