Your conscience is your model of how God is. The conscience is given to each person by God as a mechanism of characterizing him based on reflections of what you have seen and experienced so far in life. Your idea of God in any moment is comprised of the composite of every ideal human behavior you have witnessed or imagined to that point, subject to your present understanding.
Your model of God is only as good as what you do with it. What kinds of questions do you ask, how often, and what do you do with the answer?
Unfortunately, almost all people treat the conscience as something that only gets their attention when it interrupts the regularly scheduled programming in their mind—much like a compass that stays in a backpack until you are lost. A compass is of little use if you keep it in your pack, and the consequences of doing so can be disastrous.
Most people have not explicitly thought about what their conscience is. They would not be able to say “my conscience is the amalgamation of the best of humanity I’ve ever believed could exist,” although it is. To most, it is merely an implicit, emotional resource that makes them feel guilty when they do less than their best.
Without explicitly understanding what your conscience is, you will not likely make the most of it. You will fail to update it as often as you otherwise would when seeing examples of aspects of human character that exceed what you previously thought possible. You are also unlikely to come to the important conclusion that the perception of an aspect of ideal character in others means it is possible for you to exercise the same.
Your conscience is a guidance system that will show you the way towards God, as far as you presently understand him, as often as you “look” at it. It is your current model of the ideal—not just rules of ideal behavior, but also ideal outcomes and ideal character. It is how he represents to you what he would do in your place, given your degree of understanding of his character. It can show you all things you should do in order to be like how you imagine God to be. In this way, you can use the idealized character portrayed by your conscience to articulate your ideal potential self.
As a model, your conscience can be queried. You can ask yourself questions and, inasmuch as you are deeply honest, God will answer you through your conscience: What could I do better? Am I doing everything I can to get what I say I want? Do I treat people as well as I could? What would make me stronger? Am I doing it? Do I willingly engage in things that make me weaker? Am I doing the best in all I do, all the time?