We don’t often talk about the ethics of the decisions we make every day in business. Yet, the Global Financial Crisis has shown us that ignoring the ethical side of our business lives can lead to $billions lost, suicides and hardship all round.
Sounds pretty gloomy when I put it this way.
There were many issues that led to this crisis but it all started when bankers lent money to families that had no hope in hell of ever paying off those loans.
What was going through their minds? Did common sense just fly out the window? Didn’t they care about what they were doing and what would happen to those families when crunch time came?
These bankers were driven by the Christmas bonuses, meeting targets and building their portfolios.
But why has this happened?
Here’s what I think…
Generally, decisions aren’t ethically based because ethics doesn’t pay. In fact, your ethics may cost you your job, your investments or more importantly, your life. There is no measurable, sustainable relationship between ethics and our own self interests. There are few rewards for acting ethically.
Of all our human qualities, ethics has the hardest edge and is the most demanding.
We’re losing the ability to make ethical decisions about our businesses and our lives. Mostly because we don’t exercise our ethical muscle often enough in small ways. So what hope do you have of making the really tough ethical decisions?
Here’s what I mean.
Do you buy your mate a dinner on your expense allowance?
Do you use office stores and equipment for your own use without approval?
Do you ‘add a few things’ in your insurance claim when you get robbed?
These small decisions all help to exercise your ethical muscle. You get used to making decisions where you lose but that make very little difference in the overall scheme of things. Nobody may ever be aware of your decision. You make the decision purely because you personally won’t cross that line.
You may argue that it just doesn’t matter and nobody will be any worse off anyway. But that’s not the point. These small decisions prepare you for the big decisions. The decisions that will make a difference.
You’ve just got to read about what’s happening with the MP rorts in the UK to see what I mean. It’s disgraceful and it’s unethical. But many may well have been within accepted practice or even, the law.
I’ll leave you with this story, it’s my favourite.
Jean Moulin organised the French Resistance in the Second World War. He was betrayed in Lyons in June 1943. He was slowly and horribly tortured by the Germans and died without revealing any names, saving the movement and many lives. He died for his beliefs and for his honour.
But this is not the real ethical story.
When the Germans invaded France in 1940, Jean Moulin was a top public servant who controlled the region around Chartres. He was well known, respected and ambitious.
On the first day of occupation he was asked to sign a document that detailed the massacre of 9 French women and children by French colonial troops. He refused to sign without proof.
He was beaten and tortured and thrown into a cell with the swollen cadaver of a woman. He knew he could not last another round of torture and this sort of treatment so he tried to commit suicide.
The suicide attempt failed and finally the Germans relented.
The Germans wanted to compromise Jean Moulin. He was respected and had influence and they wanted him to do their bidding. They failed.
But how often are we compromised. We see ourselves as useful. Our compromise today will save us to do better tomorrow.
This is a tough one because compromise keeps people talking and living successfully together. But there is a real difference between this talent and the marginalisation of ethics in the name of a smooth process.
Unfortunately when someone who has made ethical compromises reaches the summit, he usually discovers himself to be too compromised, too dependent, too tired, to do as he intended.
And there is our problem.
Exercise your ‘ethical muscle’ every day in small ways. It’s like any muscle, unless you use it there will be no strength there. You can’t lift a 150kg without first lifting 15 kilos.
Acknowledgement: The ideas and some of the content was taken from ‘On Equilibrium’ by John Ralston Saul. Well worth the read.
I would love your comments and thoughts about this, feel free to join the discussion by commenting below under “Leave a reply”.
