The rhetoric and reality of business ethics

A talented and gifted investment counselor went out on her own. She was shrewd and diligent, so business kept coming in, and pretty soon she realized she needed an in-house counsel, so she began interviewing young lawyers.

“As I’m sure you can understand,” she started off with one of the first applicants, “in a business like this, our personal integrity must be beyond question.” She leaned forward. “Mr. Hernandez, are you an “honest” lawyer?”

“Honest?” replied the job prospect. “Let me tell you something about honest. Why, I’m so honest that my father lent me Four Hundred Thousand Pesos for my law office and I paid back every penny the minute I tried my very first case.”

“Impressive..... And what sort of case was that?”

The lawyer squirmed in his seat and admitted, “He sued me for the money.”

There is a big difference between rhetoric and reality of business ethics.

I have been asked this question before.

Francis, how do you define business ethics?

I had a canned answer for this question and a couple of years ago I was pleasantly surprised to see that part of my answer became a title of a book authored by none other than the leadership guru whose programs my partners and I represent here in our country, Dr. John Maxwell.

Here is my answer. There is no such thing as business ethics. There is only ethics whether we are in business or not. The thing with integrity is that it is a package deal thing. You simply cannot practice selective integrity. Either you have it or you don’t.

Michael Josephson says: One problem with talking about business ethics is there’s often a wide gap between rhetoric and reality. The reality is that business isn’t nearly as bad as some critics make it out to be or nearly as good as its apologists contend. By the same token, ethics may not be as crucial to success as moralists make it.

Yes, trust has been badly eroded by too much lying and cheating, even by basically decent people. Yet every day, people of character successfully overcome pressures and resist temptations to sacrifice ethics for expediency.

At the same time, well-meaning reformers often oversell the role of ethics in success. Asserting platitudes like “good ethics is good business” as if it were moral truth makes the case for ethics more vulnerable to cynics anxious to disprove the generality with a host of examples.

The truth is, good ethics sometimes is good business, but sometimes it’s not. It depends on one’s goals and how one defines good business. Sometimes good ethics can end in bankruptcy. Of course, so can bad ethics.

A fairer statement is that good ethics can be a very powerful business asset. Good things tend to happen to companies and individuals who consistently do the right thing, and bad things tend to happen to those who even occasionally do the wrong thing.

But the crucial point is that the moral obligation to live according to ethical principles is not dependent on whether it’s advantageous. People of character do the right thing in the pursuit of virtue, not self-interest. And Michael is right.

People do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. And these are the same people who have a pure heart and clean hands and they are well respected.

Strive not to be a person of success but strive to be a person of character.

(Francis Kong will be the lead trainer for the Dr. John Maxwell’s “Developing the Leader Within You” leadership program this March 17-18 at the EDSA Shangri-La Hotel. For further inquiries contact Inspire Leadership Consultancy Inc. 632-6872614)