The Courage to be Ethical

The temptations to bend the rules to gain money and power have always been part of the corporate landscape. “Greed is good,” says Gordon Gecko, his voice echoing through generations. But you’re not living in a movie. 

Ethical challenges in the workplace are common—and it didn’t take the meltdown on Wall Street to make that clear. (I'll share two real-life stories with you at the end of this piece about people who faced some especially challenging problems.)  You're asked about an ad your company is about to run with claims in it that you know are false. You see safety concerns regarding a new product shoved under the rug. You’re asked to approve a report sent by your company covering up environmental damage you know your company caused. You spot deliberate misstatements in your company’s books….

There’s always a voice in you that wants to do the right thing but the pressures to go along with unethical actions can get intense. So what do you do? 

The last thing you want to do is charge out on a white horse and make a fool of yourself and a victim of somebody else. Ethical situations are sometimes unclear because facts, interpretations or motivations are unclear. So start by doublechecking your facts, sources and documents. Then take an honest look at your own motivations. If you’re driven by anger and frustration, however justified, then your judgments are suspect.

Can you deal with this problem through channels? Is there an ombudsman or a formal complaint mechanism in your company with legitimacy and power? If so, start there.

But if there’s no in-house mechanism you can trust to act in your interests and you’re still determined to act—don’t just dump your concerns into the office rumor mill. Start by looking for and discreetly soliciting allies you can trust, especially people who may have more knowledge, contacts and status than you do.

Then make a plan. With the counsel if not active support of others, write down the outcomes you want, then describe in detail the actions you think will get you there. Set timelines and list the resources you’ll need. Anticipate reactions to your actions and develop options to respond to them.  If your issue is big enough, include media and legal options.

Now it’s time to commit—or not. Calling attention to an unethical practice is risky. You can lose friends and sleep, create messy conflicts, muddy your career track or even lose your job. Your bosses and colleagues might lean on you, with real consequences if you fail to join in, or at least to keep your mouth shut.

Assess these risks carefully. The “right” path for you may be obvious, but finding the courage to walk it may be another matter.

At least it was for me, confronted by a growing ethical challenge during the eighteen months I spent as a civilian political officer in wartime Vietnam. I opposed the war from the beginning and thought it was a lost cause. Yet I freely went there because war was an adventure I’d not yet had. Only when it was clear that people were living and dying because of my actions did I finally confront the shallowness of my motives (and of my life) at that time. That was hard enough, but the really tough part was gaining the guts to write and speak out against the war, despite the risks to my career. I learned more about courage doing that than I ever did in dodging bullets.

The first lesson was almost a no-brainer: it’s easier to be brave the more you can reduce the risks in the actions that challenge you to be brave. You can reduce those risks by getting more skills and experience to handle them, by gaining the support of others and by creating a competent plan.

The second lesson is just as important but more subtle.  My experience is that the courage to implement a difficult ethical decision comes not so much from any outside pressure, but from the inner meaning your ethical behavior has for you: you are more likely to take a risk if you see that risky action satisfying a deep sense of purpose in your life. That might include the quiet satisfaction you take in your personal integrity, or in knowing that your actions will be of service to others and that your example will inspire others, or that what you do will make a contribution, even if small, to a larger pattern of corporate integrity that’s important to you.

These reflections must come not from the head, but from that quiet space inside where you can shed even for a moment the clutter and pressures that cloud judgment. It is the space where you intrinsically know what makes your life meaningful and worth living. Perhaps for you it is defined by conscience, by religious or spiritual beliefs, by the examples of others or by all of these things together.

I don’t mean to make it sound easy. Integrity can be a lonely business. Yes, you want to enlist others to back you up. But there will still be moments when it’s like baseball; at one level, it’s a team sport, but when a fastball is coming at you at 100 miles an hour, the decision to swing is ultimately yours.

Inspiring people to do the right thing: A conversation with John Graham

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 A hero's story: Roger Boisjoly

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 A hero's story: Cynthia Fitzgerald

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© 2010 John Graham

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