As we enter the final days of the 2010 political season in the U.S., our awareness of unethical and unscrupulous behavior rises to the surface. The voice inside us wakes up and starts talking and asking questions. What are the ethics of the main stream political strategy of “dirtying-up” an opponent? Is the domain of ethical behavior bounded only by money changing hands? Does unethical equate to illegal? Is there such a thing as ethically behaving badly? Is there a difference between unscrupulous and unethical behavior?
I recently completed the California Ethics Orientation training and out of the ca. 200 pages only about 2 focused on general behavior – the rest had money linked in. In the public sector, the umbrella legislative platform is usually entitled the “Uniform Code of Ethics”. Having read a few, there is so much legal jargon in these that they are virtually unintelligible.
In the private sector some companies and most professional associations have written ethical codes and standards of behavior. But in recent surveys almost half of those surveyed felt their company was behaving ethically.
So with all this behavior visible and swirly around us, are we falling victim to ethical apathy and indifference?
If you think about behavior as a mountain of possibilities, surrounding the mountain close to the base is a fence line. That fence separates legal from illegal behavior. Somewhere up higher on the mountain is a second fence that separates ethical from unethical. The posts that hold that fence are foundational principles (e.g. vested power whether in the public or private sector is for service; statements made should only be made in an objective and truthful manner; one shall not maliciously or falsely, directly or indirectly, injure the reputation and prospects of another, etc.). A bit further up the mountain is a third fence I’ll refer to as the “Stuck-on-Stupid” fence. It bounds behavior that is not illegal or unethical but just plain stupid.
Now take for example a body of work moving up the corporate structure or the academic world, and one receiver after another erases the name of the person before them, inserts their name implying the work is their own, and passes it forward. Is this illegal, unethical, plain stupid, or perfectly okay?
Try using the mountain and fence analogy to evaluate behavior – whether personal, in the public sector or the private sector. It might help us all break out of a state of indifference that we seem to have fallen into and start thinking again.
