Turning a Corner

Ethics is a far more subtle phenomenon than most people would like to think. We tend to compartmentalize our world and in doing so, we regard leaders as clearly ethical or obviously unethical. In hindsight, we always point to overt ethical missteps and say, "how did the SEC miss that?" or "why didn't someone blow the whistle?" But the reality is that most ethical issues aren't grand or seemingly significant enough for individuals to pause and consider them.

We are lumbering through on-campus interviews for summer internships this month, and one common behavioral question is "Tell me about a time you faced an unethical situation." I don't know what other people say when they get this question, but I imagine many are hard-pressed to think of a situation they are comfortable talking about, if they can think of anything at all. This, I would argue, is because overtly unethical (and usually illegal) activity, even though perpetrated by someone else, is highly embarrassing and difficult to talk about in an interview, and subtle unethical behavior, the kind we are surrounded by, day in and day out, often goes entirely without notice.

For instance, slacking off is unethical--when an individual doesn't pull his or her weight, someone else has to fill in the gap or the business suffers. This is true of team projects here at business school and it's certainly true in the real world. Start-ups have very little tolerance for poor performers, and one or two really bad apples can lead to the dissolution of the entire firm.

Last week in my Entrepreneurship and Private Equity class, we discussed the management and organization of high-growth businesses. One feature of the CEO's position that Professor BenDaniel astutely pointed out is that the CEO is the role model to which every employee responds. People come into the office based on when the CEO comes in, they limit expenses during travel based on the CEO's example, and they even treat their colleagues with a similar degree of kindness and respect as the CEO exhibits towards them. What is so remarkable about this phenomenon is that individuals aren't inherently ethical or unethical--they are inherently malleable.

For the most part, no one is even conscious of how they are being influenced or whether their behavior is ethical. In the beautiful words of C.S. Lewis: "The moment of his consent almost escaped his notice; certainly, there was no struggle, no sense of turning a corner. There may have been a time in the world's history when such moments fully revealed their gravity...But for him, it all slipped past in a chatter of laughter, of that intimate laughter among fellow professionals, which of all earthly powers is strongest to make men do very bad things before they are yet, individually, very bad men," [That Hideous Strength].