Advisory panels and committees make recommendations, give advice, identify important issues, and produce reports to guide decision making. An organization uses advisory panels and committees to increase the scope of its moral imagination to deal with uncertain situations with which its own members lack familiarity. Current examples of such uncertain situations that advisory panels and committees have been called to address include the consequences of rapidly innovating in biotechnology and nanotechnology; medical care providing experimental therapies; and the use of surveillance technology in free societies. In such unfamiliar situations, even well-intentioned people within the organization may be uncertain about the most appropriate principled behavior that considers and justly balances multidimensional consequences.

In addition to the need for guidance in uncertain situations, it may be difficult to ...