Crisis: Forgetting Ethics Has a Human Face

0
1257
Paul Jesep 016-ct-2014-10By Paul P. Jesep, JD, MPS, MA
From ethikos magazine

Nonprofits, healthcare organizations, and corporations of all sizes, whether mandated by law or as a matter of best practices, expend enormous resources on ethics training, as well as developing and implementing codes of conduct. Whether you evaluate Wall Street shenanigans, or ethical missteps in smaller organizations, there’s an elephant in the room few want to acknowledge.

Something isn’t working. Ethical training and standards continue to fall short. Every day there’s news about wrongdoing in organizations of every type and size. Why? Perhaps the biggest reason is forgetting that ethics is about the actions and inactions of people. Ethics has a human face.

It’s a mistake, frequently overlooked, to focus on codes, policies and procedures as a means to further a solid, robust ethical culture believing rules can adequately preempt unforeseen problems. Of course there must be protocols in place to prevent and punish unethical behavior, but ethics in general must be understood in the context of human nature and speak to one’s better angels.

Hopefully, you slow down while driving in a school zone not because of the potential for a traffic ticket , but primarily because of child safety. This would be an example of personal ethics or values being greater than, though complementary to, law. Personal ethics is leaving a note on a windshield regarding a bumper you scraped in the parking lot, though no one would be the wiser if you said or did nothing.

My advice: Personalize ethics. Focus on an individual’s sense of right and wrong during training and in policies.

Policies, if not understood and implemented in the right framework, become an inflexible, inorganic means to enable and rationalize amoral and sometimes bad behavior. If it’s not illegal or doesn’t violate company policy, then it’s ethical, or at a minimum, there is no personal obligation to act.

In one tragic example, janitors witnessed the abuse of children at Penn State, but didn’t report it. Did they exchange their personal ethics for business ethics or those reflecting the culture of Penn State? Would they have been complacent had it been a son or grandson being abused? Did they have a Sense-Of-Self, a strong understanding of individual ethics? Did they personalize the wrong doing?

Personal and professional ethics should not be compartmentalized. There isn’t one type of ethics for interacting with family and friends and another for colleagues or behaving in the workplace.

In addition, too often the differences between law and ethics are overlooked. Law and ethics are complementary, but their distinctions must be maintained.

Laws (or company policies) are not enough. Sometimes employees need to be reminded in stark terms why personal values are sometimes more important than law.

Historically, laws have been used to justify tyranny and injustice and though “legal,” many statutes can be unethical. Colonialism, racial segregation, and the mistreatment of Jews in Nazi Germany come to mind. Marketing policies at a mortgage company can be deceptive, though finding criminal intent under the law can be difficult. The corporate behavior was legal, but was it ethical?

Ethics rest with the individual. Individual ethics should fuel a person to do what’s right for the sake of it, not because of the existence of a law or policy. Ethics must be taught and understood in a larger context. Ethics isn’t about charts, fancy terms, and a long list of “don’ts.” Consider the impact on others.

It’s worth underscoring, although organizations are fined for engaging in bad acts, ultimately the entity does not have the ability to make unethical decisions. Banks, government contractors, or healthcare organizations, are created on paper as legal entities.

People, not LLCs, 501(c)s, or corporations formed by filing papers with the secretary of state’s office, run organizations and make the decisions leading to fines for wrongdoing. All the policies in the world won’t prevent bad behavior if actions by people and the impact on people aren’t understood.

Unfortunately, government has enabled bad behavior. The consequences for intentional wrongdoing are paid by the lifeless organization, the legal entity that has no brain or decision making ability without the choices of individuals.

Before rolling out the next policy or updating your code of ethics factor in the following in both policies and training:

  • Individuals are ethics. Ethics are defined by the personal values they bring to an organization. These values reflect, in part, the beliefs individuals were raised with and those they impress upon their children.
  • Ethics should not be compartmentalized. Some will take exception with this observation, but there are only personal ethics. Although each profession has unique needs and specific challenges, there are core universal values.
  • It shouldn’t matter if you’re a bank CEO, health center CFO, or cab driver in New York City. Ethics are ethics.
  • Teaching ethics in a workshop or MBA program never should be about “case studies.” People are hurt by ethical breaches. In addition, people can be helped and safeguarded when someone has a strong set of ethical values. Ethics are flesh and blood.
  • Ethics must be humanized; whether it’s about patient care and the risk of what happens if the quality of care is trimmed to increase the bottom line, or a bank’s sloppy handling of mortgage foreclosures that hurts families.
  • Get members of your team to think in terms of empathy. What if something happened to them or a beloved family member because of a certain policy, conduct, or marketing strategy? As the Golden Rule teaches, do unto others as you’d have done onto you.

Summary

Several basic elements seem to influence ethical lapses:

  • Depersonalization (people, not legal entities, determine behaviors and reactions);
  • Failing to keep a distinction between law and ethics, though they are complements;
  • Letting an organization take the rap rather than holding individuals accountable;
  • Humility – we’re all capable of having an ethical lapse – it’s human, be aware of your own potential to make them;
  • Failing to take time to assess individual personal values and how they play out in all aspects of one’s life;
  • Making ethics more complicated than they are – policies are important, but ethics are about people, not wordy guidelines;
  • Unaddressed mental health issues;
  • Finding stillness, not quiet, but stillness where you don’t think – it helps keep the individual grounded in a world of constant noise and motion;
  • Not focusing on the application of universal personal values;
  • Forgetting to ask yourself and others “why” and “what if” in the context of action or inaction; and
  • Ethical lapses are not victimless.

The starting point for ethics, no matter the profession, is people, still considered by many as an organization’s most important asset. This understanding can go a long way to furthering ethics.

[bctt tweet=”@theSCCE The starting point for #ethics, no matter the profession, is people” via=”no”]