As a nation, we all love success and we love great results. Success, often measured in dollars and the volume of goods or services sold, turns solid performers into heroes. Heroes get promoted and celebrated and even in these digital times, heroes get the 
equivalent of the corner office and the company car unless there’s an ethical fall. The hero becomes a zero and shown the door.
Despite the social and even political leanings of a publicly-traded organization, the super salesperson, the amazing marketer, the creative CFO or financier who rescues the company or funds a bold new initiative are applauded and placed on pedestals.
As Results Improve
As the super salesperson and their department, or whatever celebrated position gains in status and power, a strange phenomenon begins to take hold. Others around those people, be it a profit or nonprofit, tend to leave them alone. As they bask in their successes, few questions are asked as to methodology or approaches. No one questions the ethics or the remarkable increases and turn-arounds. They can be somewhat “exotic” or “capricious” and even a bit flamboyant – and it all part of their mystique. Mystique and disconnection, however, are potential precursors to an ethical fall.
Many years ago, a banker friend of mine was asked to make a presentation to the CFO of a super-hot, super red-hot chain of retail food stores. The chain was expanding like crazy and it seemed as though they could do no wrong.
Little did my friend know that he would not be alone. There were several other bankers invited into the same meeting all vying for the honor to serve the company. Predictably, the bankers dressed as bankers out of respect for the CFO.
The meeting was held in an office that had the appearance of an elementary school classroom. There were big chairs and little chairs, stuffed toys on the shelves and various pieces of sporting goods equipment and yoga mats for the frequent breaks of the staff.
No one expected the CFO to enter the room in an Armani suit, but her entrance was ridiculous. She wore a faded T-shirt and cut off jeans. Her chair was a giant exercise ball. She disregarded all of the bankers, virtually mocking them in the meeting because she was “cool,” and they weren’t. Others in her company embraced her. She was the bright light who had taken the company public, she was the powerhouse behind the expansion plans and the industry-wide recognition.
Ethical Fall
Unfortunately, the CFO was not playing with a full ethical deck. Her financial projections, her assumptions, her “squeezing” the vendors for lower costs, were backfiring. In the rush to feed her eccentricities and assumptions were major flaws the company was willing to overlook. She had been overstating where she should have been more prudent, she was allowing unethical behavior to compensate for what should have been more conservative growth. Overlooking is a buzz word for the potential for the ethical fall.
The stock price started to slip, then it fell off a ledge. The SEC began to investigate. My banker friend told me the CFO started to wear business attire to meetings at the bank’s main branch but it didn’t help. They refused to lend her money. She was terminated not long after.
The company could never recover from its ethical fall and the entire chain was acquired and descended into oblivion.
Good results, whether measured in terms of sales and units sold, services rendered, members served or any other analytical measure are not to be separated from good ethics. Any organization not only needs to be cognizant of its successes, but the ethical price of those successes. All too often the two are seen as separate and when that occurs, the results can be catastrophic.
The number of “seemingly successful” companies that have collapsed or nearly collapsed under the weight of unethical behavior is astounding. To give carte blanche to successful departments within an organization without tracking their methodology is a formula for disaster. Is your organization headed for an ethical fall? It may be if results are more important than the procedures used to gain those results.
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