A day with my nose press’d hard against the perspiring computer screen writing scenarios for a new course which I lead later this month, all about Ethical Dilemmas in Diplomacy.

As far as I know this is a pioneer course, the first of its kind to be taught to professional practitioners by a former Ambassador.

My general theme is that a diplomatic career brings with it all sorts of explicit or implicit ethical dilemmas. I have written about some of these on my site here, including this example – one of my first ever postings – arising from the US bombing of Libya in 1986.

Part of my research for this course has involved getting from the FCO, UN and elsewhere examples of the sort of guidance they give on ethical issues. In practice this comes down to all sorts of Rules and accompanying procedures on giving effect to Honesty/Integrity, Fairness, Transparency and so on.

Plus there are detailed guidelines on what to do if civil servants feel that the instructions they are getting are incompatible with their private conscience or are otherwise professionally suspect.

The sassy Dutch Foreign Ministry of course does a great job, giving its diplomats lots of simple scenarios where ethical dilemmas arise (eg gettings gifts from foreign contacts, conflicts of interest), then cleverly adding new factors to each scenario to show how moral choices get complex precisely because the different official guidelines may point in different directions of outcome or behaviour.

My conclusion?

Diplomats need to be guided by three things:

  • the Rules
  • their heads
  • and their hearts

Sometimes those three indeed point to quite different practical ways forward, especially in cases when high policy gets tangled up in immediate tactics – and even one’s own professional future.

It’s fine a Ministry offering you all sorts of ways to ‘blow the whistle’ on corruption among your superiors. But can you be really sure that if you try to do so, the system will not hit back at you in self-defence? Achieving fleeting media fame as a whistle-blower, but then drifting into career limbo is not necessarily a good outcome?

What if you get urgent intelligence information pointing to some sort of calamity which you can not use to save lives without risking revealing the source and losing other vital information later?

And which is in practice better, and/or what do the public want their diplomats to do?

To go for bold speedy outcomes eg on human rights in benighted foreign lands but risk the death of key local activists, or to chip away at steady slower modest change? The Craig Murray saga offers us all vivid examples of how to be brave and dramatic – and professionally 100% ineffective. 

Myriad questions. Maybe I’ll find the odd answer here and there.

If anyone wants me to run this intriguing course for their colleagues or institution, just let me know: mail@charlescrawford.biz