The Concept of Moral Imagination: a practical tool for Ethical Reflection and Decision-making

Week of Integrity interview series

Making Integrity Tangible in a Digital Age: Concrete Practices, Insights, and Reflections for Fostering Integrity in Professional Settings

Marianna: What is moral imagination?

Ben Zevenbergen:

Moral imagination (To read the academic article about moral imagination click here) is a crucial capability for people who make important decisions. It is the capacity to think through the potential consequences of a particular decision, while recognizing the limitations of one’s own perspective and considering alternative perspectives. I work closely with people developing novel technologies that operate on a large scale. These professionals often work in areas that are not yet fully regulated by law. While regulatory frameworks are emerging, such as the EU AI Act, there are still areas of technological development where laws and regulations have not yet caught up with innovation.

In those situations, people need to be able to think through some fundamental questions: What impact will this technology have on the world? What kind of world is it creating? Is that a world we can justify? Is it one that people actually want? Are people's needs being addressed? And ultimately, are these technologies making the world a better place? These are questions of moral imagination. They help us assess whether we are doing the right thing and encourage us to reflect on the broader consequences that decisions about technology may have on individuals, communities, and society as a whole.

Marianna: Why did you feel the necessity to develop this approach? What needs does it address and what gap does it cover?

Ben Zevenbergen:

Many organisations conduct ethical, compliance, legal, and accessibility reviews shortly before a particular technology is launched. By that stage, however, development teams may have spent months or even years building the product. Significant decisions have already been made, and substantial resources have already been invested. The challenge is that ethical considerations are often introduced too late in the process. It is not enough to tell people to "be ethical" at the beginning of a project and then evaluate their work against ethical principles two years later.

When ethical concerns are raised at the end of the development cycle, teams can become understandably frustrated. They may have invested a great deal of effort and have built expectations around the project's success. Being told at the final stage that a product cannot be launched because ethical considerations were overlooked, can be difficult for everyone involved. For this reason, we decided to engage directly with teams from the earliest stages of development. Through moral imagination workshops, we help them identify ethical challenges, reflect on potential consequences, and make informed ethical decisions from day one.

The workshops provide participants with the ethical awareness and practical tools needed to prepare for future ethical review processes. As a result, when the time comes to seek approval from an ethics committee, teams can clearly explain the decisions they made, the reasoning behind them, how those decisions were implemented, and how they evaluated their impact. This makes the review process far more constructive and effective for everyone involved. Ethical scrutiny remains essential, but the conversation becomes informed by both the people who developed the technology and those responsible for evaluating it. Rather than being a one-sided assessment by the ethicists, it becomes a meaningful dialogue between ethical reviewers and developers.

Let’s delve deeper into what moral imagination is and how the workshop is structured. As explained in your article, the moral imagination method encompasses four steps: reflection, expansion, evaluation, and action. Could you briefly guide us through each of these steps?

First Step: Reflection

Teams often operate with many assumptions about the world that go unexamined. These assumptions may stem from shared educational backgrounds, professional experiences, or organisational cultures. As a result, people frequently assume that their perspectives are broadly shared within the team, even when this is not the case. The purpose of the reflection stage is to bring these assumptions to the surface.

We ask participants to reflect on their values, motivations, and the beliefs that inform their work. We encourage them to make those assumptions explicit and explain why they hold them. This makes everyone's position within a team explicit. Often participants are surprised when they hear their colleagues' positions, given that no discussion of this kind has taken place before. Ethical reflection is rarely included in formal job descriptions. People are hired to develop technologies, define strategies, or deliver projects, not necessarily to discuss the values that underpin those activities.

When participants begin to articulate their motivations, values, and ethical priorities, an important moment of discovery and friction occurs. Team members realize that their colleagues may have different positions from those they had initially assumed. They start realizing that their colleagues may hold different values and have different motivations. Once these views have been shared, we work collaboratively to negotiate the four core ethical values that will guide the project. We discuss, interpret, and refine those values until the team develops a common understanding of the ethical objectives they are working towards. However, an internally agreed set of values is never enough. A team of engineers, bankers, or policy specialists may hold strong ethical convictions, but those views may not necessarily align with the perspectives of users, customers, or broader society. That is why the next step is expansion.

Second Step: Expansion

The purpose of the expansion stage is to broaden the perspectives that emerged during the reflection stage and encourage participants to examine and reflect on how different people might interpret the same values and concepts and on how they may interpret their meaning. To achieve this, we use a range of techniques. These include exercises inspired by John Rawls' "veil of ignorance," stakeholder mapping exercises, and role-playing scenarios grounded in science fiction. We imagine technology several years into the future and explore how its integration into society may unfold under different circumstances, but in believable ways.

Preferably, these role-play scenarios are designed around the values identified during the reflection stage. Participants are often assigned roles they would be least comfortable occupying. They may be asked to represent individuals or groups whose interests differ significantly from their own. And we ask them to voice that perspective, articulate its concerns, defend its position, and explain the reasoning behind it. Typically, this exercise produces two results: first, participants develop a greater appreciation for viewpoints different from their own. They realize that perspectives they initially disagreed with may be entirely reasonable when viewed through a different lens.

Second, participants frequently change their minds. Once they have spent time defending another person's position, they often develop a deeper understanding of it and begin to reassess their own assumptions. As a result, the original perspective with which the team entered the workshop is often no longer sufficient. The values, assumptions, and viewpoints identified during reflection stage must be reconsidered in light of these broader perspectives.

Third Step: Evaluation

The evaluation stage focuses on understanding the kind of world we are creating when a technology is deployed. And the central question in this stage is what kind of world are we creating if this technology is launched into the world? I often describe technologies as instruments that regulate the world, much like laws or policies. They enable certain behaviours, constrain others, empower some, disempower others, and distribute power in certain ways.

During this stage, participants imagine different future scenarios based on different value priorities. In one scenario, technology may maximise wellbeing. In another, it may prioritise privacy above all else. In a third, speed and efficiency may take precedence over competing ethical considerations. We explore how relatively small technological choices can lead to significantly different social outcomes. And then we start thinking through those scenarios, asking ourselves which of these worlds we want and which one is defensible.

To facilitate these discussions, we use simple visual tools like graphs that help participants map and visualize trade-offs between values. Increasing one value often requires compromising another. For example, enhancing convenience may reduce privacy, while maximising transparency may affect confidentiality. The aim is to reflect on what happens to the other values when we change one of them and reflect on the tradeoffs and the values that are sacrificed when we choose to augment another one.

The purpose of these exercises is not to produce mathematically precise analyses. Rather, they help people visualise tradeoffs, compare alternative futures, and evaluate which outcomes are both desirable and defensible. By imagining and discussing multiple possible worlds, participants develop a clearer understanding of the societal implications of their decisions and can align around the direction they believe is most responsible. Of course, these exercises remain a simulation. Participants are imagining the perspectives of others rather than engaging with external stakeholders directly. Nevertheless, they provide a strong foundation for understanding which questions need to be asked, and which stakeholders should be consulted as the project moves forward.

Fourth Step: Action

The final stage is about translating ethical reflection into practical action. This often involves working with user experience teams or specialist research organisations to engage external stakeholders through ethically informed surveys, workshops, and consultation processes. These interactions encourage people to think carefully about the tradeoffs associated with a particular technology and the impact those choices may have on themselves, their families, their communities, and society more broadly. The results should not be interpreted as authoritative and definitive ethical guidance. Surveys primarily reveal preferences rather than fully reasoned ethical positions. However, they provide valuable insights into whether a project is moving in the right direction or whether adjustments may be required.

At this stage, we also revisit the technology itself. We ask participants whether the ethical decisions and compromises identified during the workshop are actually reflected in the product as it currently exists. Can they identify features that embody a particular ethical value? Can they point to design choices that prioritise one value and suppress another? If they cannot point at which part of the technology reflects a certain ethical value, that is often a sign that further work is needed. In those situations, we provide teams with specific actions to undertake and ask them to return with a plan showing how they intend to address the identified issues.

The process ultimately results in a "responsibility plan." This plan translates ethical commitments into concrete actions and integrates them into the team's development processes and functional requirements. It serves several purposes. First, it creates alignment and agreements around specific priorities and changes. Second, because the decisions around those changes are developed collectively, it creates legitimacy across the team rather than appearing as a top-down directive. Third, it equips participants with the language and tools needed to recognise ethical issues as they arise and engage with them constructively. Over time, this can contribute to a broader cultural transformation. Teams begin to understand that technical decisions also have ethical and societal consequences. Ethical reflection becomes an integral part of decision-making rather than something that happens at the end of a project.

Participants emerge better equipped to recognise ethical concerns, discuss them openly, evaluate different options, and translate those considerations into action. Before the workshop, people would dismiss ethical questions as secondary or not relevant to their activity of technology development, but after the workshop they are more willing to engage in ethical discussions because they have been given the necessary tools to do so. They realize that their technical decisions have immediate ethical and political impacts. They are decision makers who are not writing laws, but they are building technologies that have a similar level of impact. After the workshop they are more willing to evaluate the decisions that they are making and see how ethical considerations are made and put them into action. In that sense, the workshop functions not only as a decision-making tool but also as a mechanism for organisational culture change.

Marianna: Why is it important for teams to increase their awareness of the ethical consequences of their work? What are the benefits?

Ben Zevenbergen:

In many organisations, the people executing the work on the ground are not the same people who develop the strategy, define the vision, or make high-level decisions. Yet those on the front lines often recognise emerging challenges long before they become visible at senior levels. They frequently see risks developing in real time and are often best positioned to anticipate future issues. However, they are not always empowered to raise those concerns effectively.

As a result, individuals may sense that something is problematic but struggle to articulate why. They might try to bring up their concerns, but they can be dismissed as personal opinions rather than legitimate contributions to decision-making. Many of the people who approach me for support are in this position. They believe something important is being overlooked, but they lack the structure and vocabulary needed to explain it.

The workshop helps address that challenge. It enables organisations to surface perspectives from those closest to the work and provides a structured framework for discussing them with colleagues, lawyers, managers, product designers, and other stakeholders. As a result, organisations can have more meaningful conversations about difficult questions and critically examine the legitimacy of the choices they are making. Sometimes this strengthens confidence in the chosen direction; in other cases, it leads to meaningful changes in strategy or design. There is also a broader cultural benefit. Beyond the workshop itself, participants gain the skills to recognise when ethical discussions are necessary and understand why they matter. Many of them leave feeling more empowered to engage in those conversations moving forward.

Finally, involving employees in ethical decision-making can strengthen engagement and retention. Talented professionals, particularly in highly competitive fields such as engineering, often have the opportunity to work almost anywhere. Giving them a meaningful voice in shaping the ethical direction of the organisation allows them to align their work with their values. People want to contribute not only their technical expertise but also their judgement, experience, and perspectives on the kind of future they want to help create.

Marianna: This concept has been created, developed, and tested during your experience at Google by working with their engineering teams. Is this concept applicable only to teams dealing with the creation of new technologies, or can it be applied also to other fields?

Ben Zevenbergen:

It can absolutely be applied to other fields. One reason this approach resonates so strongly with technology is that technologies regulate the world in ways that are remarkably similar to laws and policies. They enable certain actions, constrain others, and influence how power and opportunity are distributed across society.

Lawmakers, business strategists, policymakers, civil servants, and corporate leaders face similar challenges. Their decisions shape institutions, incentives, rules, and systems that affect people's lives. As a result, they too must think carefully about the consequences of their choices, the objectives they are pursuing, and the kind of world they are helping to create.

The same applies to technology developers. The difference is that many technologists do not fully recognise just how influential their work can be. Technology often functions as a form of governance, even if it is not traditionally viewed that way. In many aspects, technology has become a powerful force in shaping economies, institutions, and everyday life. The individuals and organisations driving these developments may not be elected democratically, yet their decisions increasingly influence society on a large scale.

That is why moral imagination is so important. At its core, moral imagination is a practical toolkit for improving judgement and decision-making. It encourages individuals and organisations to think proactively about their responsibilities, the consequences of their actions, and the future they are helping to build. It supports greater transparency, strengthens accountability, and helps teams move beyond reactive problem-solving towards a more thoughtful and intentional approach to shaping the world around them.

About author:

Ben Zevenbergen advises on the ethics and philosophy of technology development and deployment. He leads a research project on the ethics of AI in science at Stanford University, and until recently was a Responsible Innovation Ethics & Policy Advisor at Google. He holds a PhD from the University of Oxford and was a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton. Before that, he advised on technology policy in the European Parliament and practised as a technology lawyer in Amsterdam. His work uses law and policy as practical baselines for technology ethics. In January 2027, he will co-launch Moral Technologists, a new applied ethics advisory and research firm: www.moraltechnologists.com