Consciousness is being aware. Self-consciousness is being aware of oneself. Being conscious, rather than self-conscious, is the key concept in ethics.
Consciousness can be defined as the state of having experiences. Conscious states, or mental states, are situations in which one is having any kind of experience, be it a sensorial experience, a thought, an emotion or whatever.
Self-consciousness, a particular form of consciousness, is a broad term that is used to mean different forms of awareness regarding oneself and one’s experiences. The way we understand the concept of the self depends on which meaning of self-consciousness we use.