(A ‘fun’ ethics topic!)
As a national business ethics motivational speaker, business ethics consultant and ethics book author, I often like to casually ask: are we as ethical as we think? Do audiences as diverse in occupation as accountants, professional athletes, educators and healthcare providers.
Of course, I’m ethical (sort of)
Unfortunately, when we come down to it, there is a significant gap between how people feel about their ethical behavior and the reality of their ethical lives. Research in this area is quite compelling in showing an often-unintended hypocrisy.
Going back to an important 2007 Harvard Business Review study. The two key concepts of the research showed:
- All individuals have an innate tendency to engage in self-deception around their own ethical behavior.
- Organizations worried about ethics violations should pay attention to understanding these psychological processes at the individual level rather than focus solely on the creation of formal training programs and education around ethics codes.
Are humans destined to be unethical? Not necessarily, however, I know as a business ethics motivational speaker, business ethics consultant and ethics book author, that unless individuals buy-in to ethics, and the ethical behavior is reinforced, the evidence is quite compelling that people lean toward rationalization rather than truth.
In 2011, Kristina A. Diekmann, Ph.D., a University of Utah professor who has actively researched ethical behavior stated:
“Companies typically don’t do bad things because they have bad people. When people imagine or predict what they would do in certain situations, they think about what they should do, however, when it comes to actually making decisions, people tend to focus on what they want to do.”
Diekmann’s quote reinforces my own thoughts on rationalization. Most people in organizations large and small, know what they should do when faced with an ethical dilemma however, they override their better judgment and do what they want to do in spite of themselves.
So, why the disconnect?
A major disconnect about ethical behavior was written about in June 2018 by business writer Jeffrey Kaplan:
There is also a strong tendency to over-discount the future, which can have serious implications when it forces others to pay for one’s own mistakes. Economists have for many years studied a phenomenon called “moral hazard” which concerns the harmful impact that can arise from the imperfect alignment between risks and rewards.”
In my business ethics consulting work and in many Q&A sessions following my business ethics and corporate social responsibility motivational speeches, I have encountered numerous cases of unethical behavior. Among those who committed those miscues, is the thought of “well, I figured by the time anyone noticed the missing money (or goods or hours of unpaid services) I would have been well out-of-here.”
We have all encountered such flawed thinking in our society from the devastation wrought by opioid pay-offs to physicians to NFL denial of CTE cases to the billions of dollars in PPP fraud.
Unethical behavior never leaves the perpetrator. It may be buried or long denied, but it does not leave. Unethical behavior does lead to self-deception and it is a virtual guarantee to repeat itself; expensive ethical coursework for the organization means little unless miscreants understand their mistakes on a highly individual level.
As a business ethics speaker, I don’t expect those in my audiences to be ethically perfect, but a sense of ethical honesty must be the desired goal before all else.
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