By now you've probably heard about the Confession app for the iPhone; the app doesn't actually give you confession, but is primarily a guide for the examination of conscience required for it.
One of the things that much of the joking about the app has made clear is that this is precisely what some people find strange about it: they literally have no clue what examination of conscience is, and think it's some weird Catholic thing rather than a pretty common thing that Catholics make a full effort to preserve. So it seems worthwhile to point out two classics in the examination of conscience genre that are not Catholic at all:
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. The Stoics used examination of conscience extensively, although we mostly only know what is involved indirectly. Sorabji's Emotion and Peace of Mind is a good reference work if one wants to know the primary Stoic methods and their philosophical rationale; Hadot's The Inner Citadel is good for seeing how Marcus Aurelius's work in particular fits within the larger context of Stoic moral therapy.
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, Chapter IX. Franklin's Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection is an examination of conscience coming out of the American Enlightenment; this being Poor Richard, it's devoted wholly to making oneself a useful member of society on your way to self-sustaining contentment in Philadelphia. Really, it's hard to get more American than that; it makes you want to watch the Rocky movies which, indeed, come pretty close to being movies about Franklinism.
For Catholics, of course, the primary sources tend to be works like St. Francis de Sales's Introduction to a Devout Life or St. Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises or any number of other works. But it's the sort of thing everyone should be able to recognize, and the sort of thing that everyone should be doing, even if they aren't as systematic about it as Franklin or St. Ignatius.
