Advisory Committee on Ethics: Guidance for Generous and Respectful Engagement
The Advisory Committee on Ethics (ACE) is inspired by the Seven Grandfather Teachings which are a “set of Anishinaabe guiding principles passed down from generation to generation to guide the Anishinaabe in living a good life in peace and without conflict”Footnote 1. These have been loosely translated as love, respect, bravery, truth, honesty, humility, and wisdom.
As individuals and collectively, we will endeavor to foster a climate of respectful and generous engagement by committing to showing up and acting in accordance with these principles and practices. We will be intentional about recognizing and, where possible, mitigating the force and impact of epistemic justice. We aim to “walk the walk” as members of communities, as Canadians, and as global citizens.
Guiding Principles
- Adopt a Growth Mindset: Foster openness to encourage respectful dialogue and seek out diverse perspectives. Distinguish arguments from the individuals who hold them and engage generously in the pursuit of understanding and consensus.
- Be Brave: Be courageous in welcoming and expressing perspectives that may be difficult for others to hear. Be attentive to context and how it may influence how our words and actions are interpreted.
- Be Evidence-based: Ensure that a broad range of evidence informs our approach and guides our recommendations.
- Be Humble: Intentionally take steps to create safer spaces – be humble and attentive to words and behaviours that have the power to wound or harm, or to foster damaging hierarchies. Commit to engaging with one another with humility and take steps to recognize one’s own advantages, disadvantages, assumptions, partial perspectives, and biases.
- Be Inclusive: Commit to meaningful and respectful engagement. Be welcoming and value academic, lived, and living experiences equally. Express solidarity by treating one another with equal concern and respect. Put people first, and prioritize relationships, recognizing the intrinsic value of all people.
- Be Innovative: Provide leadership in relation to complex ethical issues and be willing to provide guidance that challenges the status quo.
- Be Pluralistic: Recognize the strength of diversity and peaceful co-existence to ensure fair and effective ways of moderating exchanges between those who hold differing perspectives and values.
- Be Reflexive: Commit to habits of reflexivity and recognize the iterative nature of the process of discovery.
- Be Transparent: Support clarity and transparency by keeping each other informed of information relevant to the effective performance of duties. Be attentive to and manage real, potential, or perceived conflicts of interest and conflicts of duty. Remain open to ongoing enquiry and to review.
Best Practices for Committee Engagement
- Acknowledge individual responsibility to co-create a safer space that fosters honest and free discussion.
- Acknowledge the valuable lived experiences, abilities, and knowledges that each individual brings.
- Agree to use discretion and to keep the specifics of meeting discussions confidential. What is said in meetings, stays there. What is learned in meetings, leaves there.
- Assume positive intentions and take responsibility for the outcomes of your actions.
- Challenge ideas, not individuals. Give people grace and space for discussion and dialogue and recognize we are all at different places on our journey.
- Exhibit self-reflection and agree to hold one another accountable to foster generosity, humility, and openness to engagement. Acknowledge the complexity of the questions you are charged with answering.
- Keep an open mind about that which you do not know. Recognize that there is always more that can be learned.
- Practice active listening. Listen to understand, not to react, and ask clarifying questions.
- Provide opportunities for everyone to contribute and facilitate engagement by eliciting verbal, written, or other forms of feedback.
If at any time you feel that the guiding principles or best practices above are not respected during a committee engagement, please reach out to one of the Co-Chairs.
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