September 10, 2009
Truth or consequences
Avoiding the pitfalls of unethical behavior
By: Tom Gegax
Sure enough, your mission statement is a thing to behold, with the potential to light up the world. But it isn’t the Mona Lisa. You can print it out in fancy fonts, frame it, and hang it. It’s still not a work of art unless it inspires you to embrace the art of working and living ethically.
Your code of ethics — the moral standards you use to relate to the world — bridges the distance between listing your ideals and living them.
Ethical living, consistently choosing to do what’s right, is its own reward. To be sure, it’s easy to resist everything but temptation, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde. Lots of things may look fun (and they are) and some things may also look harmless (but they aren’t).
Immoral behavior has lethal side effects for your business, employees, and yourself. Before you sidestep your conscience, consider the consequences.
Consequences of behavior
1) You’re being watched. Put aside for a moment the nanotechnology that makes cameras the size of push pins. Look around. The people who report to you are watching your every move.
Our natural competitive impulse finds us keeping an eye on one another. So often we raise the bar higher for others than we do for ourselves. One slip and we’re instant grist for the gossip mill.
But it’s worse for the boss. Employees model their leaders like children model their parents.
Swipe a few pads of Post-it notes and people will think that it’s open season on the supply cabinet. That’s why I gave my assistant, Dorie, an ongoing kitty of $100 to pay for personal expenses like snacks and postage. I obeyed every rule and received the same discount on tires and car repairs as everyone else.
2) You’ll know it. Some people wrap themselves into logic pretzels to justify dubious decisions. But deep down, where the best part of them lives, they know better. New York Times columnist William Safire explained it well:
”The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.”
Take the time my company car’s lease expired. I upgraded to a more expensive model when profits came in below expectations and the entire company was in belt-tightening mode.
Even if nobody so much as raised an eyebrow, it didn’t feel right to force the company to take the hit for my higher car payment. So I asked human resources to take an extra $300 a month out of my paycheck. All the same, I also asked HR each year to compare my compensation against our CPA firm’s national CEO market survey to ensure I was in line.
Those rare occasions I did compromise my conscience wound up costing me, often in subtle ways — I wasn’t fully present around others, or the lump in my stomach wouldn’t go away. That led to polluted thinking and bad decisions.
Sense you have an employee feeling guilty about a past decision? Tell them they’re not alone. To the extent you can, speak broadly about forgiving yourself for past errors. Tell them they know better now and they can resolve to avoid the same mistake again. Tomorrow is a new day with new opportunities to act honorably. We already know that it’s deeply rewarding to do what’s right for the sake of doing what’s right.
So take the high road — there’s less traffic.
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