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Strive to be an ethical public speaker.

As you saw in Joe’s story at the beginning of this chapter, public speaking can present numerous ethical challenges—dilemmas that make it difficult to determine what constitutes right and wrong behavior. In this chapter, we focused on those challenges, from both speakers’ and listeners’ perspectives. First, we discussed the different codes of ethics, including ethical absolutism, situational ethics, and cultural relativity. We then examined the differences between legal and ethical speech. We showed how people can be unethical in public speaking, mainly through lying, using half-truths, and causing false inferences. We also discussed the ethical ways to acknowledge the work of others (quoting from a source, paraphrasing, and using common knowledge). We touched on using sound reasoning, which we discuss in more depth in chapter 18. Finally, we shared how to be an ethical listener: show courtesy, demonstrate an open mind, and hold the speaker accountable.