Purity in ethical judgment is hard to come by. Motives and reasoning usually are mixed and are bound to change over circumstance or time. In public service, the search is for compatibility and balance, reconciliation and accommodation.
Moral absolutism rejects alternatives; moral relativism fails to distinguish among them. Public service rejects both by combining empathy, responsibility, and receptivity. The moorings for action are secured in moral character, and thinking is anchored in moral principles, including obligations to implement and comply with the law and to promote the public interest.
Our passionate, messy world of public service violates purity and precision at every turn. The way Debra Stewart sees it, “Most managers are neither pure deontologists, nor pure utilitarians, but rather operate according to a kind of ethical pluralism . . . [a] synthesis of moral systems.” The recommendation is not for fickle or expedient reasoning but rather that alternative perspectives be used so managers can see their behavior as others do. This “double focus” would have each of us “strain to experience one’s act, not only as subject and agent, but as recipient, sometimes victim”.