How can Business Ethics be explained easily? It’s a core question that as an ethics author, keynote speaker and consultant, I happily answer to audience members and executives at least a dozen times a week. The question never gets old, because it is so important.
Business Ethics explained
Business writer Melissa Horton writing for Investopedia (May 9, 2022) said that: “Business Ethics is the system of moral and ethical beliefs that guides the values, behaviors, and decisions of a business organization and the individuals within that organization…”
It is a good, technically workable definition, as is the definition given by the Indeed.com (job hunting site) editorial team on April 7, 2021:
“Business ethics is a practice that determines what is right, wrong, and appropriate in the workplace. Business ethics is often guided by laws, and keep companies and individuals from engaging in illegal activity such as insider trading, discrimination and bribery.”
The problem in explaining business ethics easily is that most educators and experts fall back on rather convoluted legalize to explain the field. Back in May 1993, Andrew Stark wrote for the Harvard Business Review:
“The more entrenched the discipline becomes in business schools, the more bewildering it appears to managers.”
He cut right to the essence of the problem. In fact, quoting another source, Andrew Stark said that trying to explain business ethics is like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall.
In my profession as an ethics speaker, business ethics consultant and author, I get concerned as well, that a rather simple and yet important topic has become so complex, bound-up in its own “self-importance,” and convoluted that it has become as elusive a topic to teach as it is for most managers to understand.
So, how can Business Ethics be explained easily?
Let me start this business ethics discussion not with a stack of law or philosophy books, but with two simple thoughts:
Every choice has a consequence.
Think about that for a second, and then consider this:
Do you have two sets of rules; one for you – and one for them?
The choices we make, and how we judge the choices of others are a good basis for ethical behavior in the workplace.
Another business ethics question: is everyone in the company on an equal, ethical footing?
In my keynote speeches and ethical consultancy meetings with groups of executives, I ask employees if they view themselves in exactly the same light as they view others? It takes an intense sense of honesty and self-reflection.
Further, if you as an executive leader (no matter the size of the company) believe in “justice” and ethical behavior, how do you react when an employee comes to you with a complaint about another employee who is committing unethical acts? Do you dismiss them, show anger toward them, move them to a lesser job or terminate them? Most important, do you act on the complaint at the end of the meeting?
Suppose the employee I mention above turns in your favorite employee? What then? Will you judge that employee as equally as with an “unfamiliar” or new employee?
How are the business ethics of your organization affected by dealings with outside vendors and/or customers? How would you handle a bribe? Suppose you were asked for a bribe to win over a new account?
We can explain our sense of business ethics far more easily than needing a complicated set of rules and regulations. Most frauds and scandals are predicated on a lack of oversite, a need or motivation to commit a crime and a rationalization.
Every choice has a consequence, and quite often, most of us know that consequence before we make the choice to commit an unethical act.
I don’t believe most managers are bewildered by business ethics, but I do believe many pundits try to convince us it is more complicated than the simple, unadorned truth.
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