In life, “Truth matters”, to quote one of my favorite leaders ever, a former General Counsel with whom I worked. If you are like most people and want to sleep well at night, stay off the slippery slope. When an alarm bell rings in your mind, listen to it! It probably sounded off for a reason. Pausing to consider why the alarm went off ensures you will take time to reconsider the situation from an ethical point of view.
Definitions of fraud, describing various kinds of theft, understanding what constitutes a conflict of interest all serve to help you consciously consider ethical choices. But having this knowledge isn’t enough. You also need to have an instinct for what is right and what is wrong. If you ever have that niggling sense that something isn’t right, stop and ask someone you trust and admire to help you think through the situation.
The risky thing is to take action without really thinking about the variety of choices you are faced with on a daily basis. Sometimes, you may not even realize that your choice has an ethical side to it. You may simply see it as what is easiest for you, or what causes you the least conflict, or helps a situation keep moving forward. However, putting on ethical lenses could prevent a mis-step that you would later regret. The examples in previous articles may serve to illustrate just how easy it is to start down the wrong road without even knowing it.
While you may not be at risk of committing even a slight ethical transgression, it is amply clear from the debacle on Wall Street in the fall of 2008 that your simple ethical decisions can affect more people than you’d ever imagine. For example, you can blame the predatory lenders, or you can blame the dangerously innocent borrower, or both. Which ever way you look at it . . that the Wall Street mess was deliberately engineered by a variety of business, or that the whole mess is an example of what can go wrong unintentionally, the fact of the matter is that we all suffered. If people in any part of the equation had slowed down to consider whether what they did was right, not just was it possible, we might not find ourselves in the financial crises we are in today.
I recently finished reading Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower by Cynthia Cooper, formerly of WorldCom. This woman, whom I was privileged to hear speak recently, is the heroine who blew the whistle on the WorldCom fraud. She recounts that her strength to blow the whistle on the huge Wall Street darling company came from lessons from her child hood. Specifically, she relates that her parents told her, “Don’t ever let yourself be bullied”, and “Think of the consequences of your actions.”
Three really simple rules can help you negotiate the sometimes treacherous times life thows at us. Follow them, and you should be in good shape:
1. Rule Number One: Don’t lie.
2. Rule Number Two: Don’t cheat.
3. Rule Number Three: Don’t steal.
I wish us all the strength to do in all circumstances what we know to be right.
Sally Rhys, MS, coaches and consults on business ethics. As the former Director, Ethics and Compliance at a $1.5B publicly traded company, her expertise will help you increase both your business knowledge and professionalism. Contact her at coachingforperspective.com