Ethics of Ambiguity

In another class I’m in, we spent a good deal of time talking about strategic ambiguity. The theory has four major points: it promotes unified diversity, preserves privileged positions, is deniable, and facilitates organizational change.

Running for City Council got me thinking about the ethics of strategic ambiguity. When someone says that they are pro-family, what does that mean? It is extremely ambiguous. It could mean that you are against abortions, or that you are in favor of social services. You support non-discrimination, or that you are against gay marriage.

A lot of people, including myself at one point, think this to be unethical. You can use the same phrase to two different groups of people and have both groups take away something completely different. You can’t control what those people take away, and yet when you say it you usually mean something specific.

Then why do we use vague terms? When you start to get specific you turn people off. Who isn’t pro-family, or pro-jobs? And yet when you say those things, you aren’t actually saying anything. When you start to get specific you turn people off.

Instead, you want to give those that don’t really care, something to lash on to. Those who have the desire to learn more will. And those that accept the vague terms at their face don’t have a desire to dig deeper. Is this our fault? No. Ambiguity makes things simple to understand. It allows those that don’t want to spend their time being involved the chance to feel involved.

Along the same lines, the goal of ambiguous communication is to get intelligent people involved in things they know nothing about.

How large is the federal budget? How much do we spend on defense? Do you know the answers to these questions? Of course you don’t. And yet when Obama told America to let the professionals figure things out, we saw an immediate plunge in his approval numbers.

The people that follow politics, and the people that care about politics, are generally intelligent. There information level is the issue. Politicians use intentionally ambiguous terms to speak to your information level, while still respecting your intelligence.

Is this unethical? It can be. But its purpose is not unethical. It only become unethical once you use the ambiguity to lie. In our earlier example, Pro-Family, it is easy to see this happening. When standing before a pro-life group you can tell them you are pro-family in hopes of having them join you. But you can say pro-family while being pro-choice. This is unethical.

To avoid being unethical, you must understand the underlying connotations behind an ambiguous term, and use the ambiguous terms only to spread information. And that’s why we take PR writing classes; to learn how to be ambiguous ethically.