[April 15, 2014] Today is tax day. But I digress. I won’t be sarcastic by referencing ethics and taxes in the same sentence (oh).
From many mentors throughout my military career I’ve been given counsel to “Never do anything illegal, immoral, or unethical.” While it certainly provided me with successful and practical guidance, the ethical advice never seemed to jell in my mind. Yet, in a profession such as the military, leadership demands ethical behavior. But, how do we clear up the lack of clarity in the concept of “ethics” as well as any ethical ambiguities?
I’m going to cut to the heart of the ethical issue in this blog post quickly; as a realist. Here it is … without the teaching, support, and insistence on ethical behavior, then we have nothing but failure.
It is time for those of us in professional and senior leadership positions to discuss both our values and what is ethical – a moral evaluation about what is good and evil (values), what we ought to do and ought not do (prohibitions), as well as fairness. We have not done it. By not having this conversation, we make assumptions about and reinforce misperceptions on what is acceptable behavior.
No wonder people get themselves (and their organizations too) into trouble. Our boundaries of behavior are not always clear, nor rewards and punishments. This is only one part of the problem.
The other part of the problem, the “elephant in the room,” is not discussed at all. The reason for a failure to have a good discussion in our society is because of pushback from prominent people who believe that ethics is not about good and evil, right and wrong. Ethics, they believe, is simply about cultural approval or disapproval of behavior. In other words, behavior is not “bad,” it is just “not approved.” This is the foundation of “political correctness” and will be left for another blog post.
Senior leaders must make it clear what the ethical standards are for the workplace, the beneficial reasons for following them, and insisting that they be followed. Otherwise, failure will inevitably follow.
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[1] A good website to understand the broad field of ethics is in the following link. The website itself, called “Wikia” is full of advertisements but has one of the better summaries of the types of ethics and a good lay down of the issues: http://philosophy.wikia.com/wiki/Ethics
[2] Another very good website but narrows the ethical behavior discussion to business ethics, as well as providing an excellent summary, is in Wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_ethics