What is Integrity? What is business Ethics?
We begin by answering head-on the questions “What is
Integrity?" and “What is Business Ethics?"
We do this in a way that is analytic but which we hope
is easily understood by the majority of our audience.
Whilst we believe that most people have an intuitive
sense of right and wrong, it is clear that an analytic understanding of
integrity is no longer a significant part of our educational or cultural curriculum.
This makes integrity difficult to implement in practice as people try to resolve issues of principle and profit in their working lives.
Indeed, some people even fail to recognize that they are facing
an ethical decision.
We also believe that the conflict between people’s intuitive sense of doing the right thing and the practical demands of their job generates a lot of the stress felt by many.
Regulation is not the whole answer to people’s work
place dilemmas. In some respects, financial regulation has created an atmosphere
of fear that a mistake will be fatal; and this can develop into a hatred of
compliance, which is perceived by many as a “necessary evil".
Employees are sometimes bullied into collusion and
coerced into finding profitable “work-arounds” of regulations. Feelings of
shame are far too common, with many employees in financial services coming to
work only to hang up their personal values next to their coats.
This condition can be described as “workplace schizophrenia",
in which people feel they cannot bring their whole self to work. This
disjunction can in itself be described as a lack of integrity in their lives.
So there may be a paradox in the present situation,
namely, that the time and energy devoted to compliance may detract from a
broader awareness of “workplace integrity".
We describe integrity in terms of its component virtues,
or “values” as we call them today. We identify the excesses and vices which are
often so apparent in financial services. But we remember that the client too
must have integrity. Investor or consumer greed is as corrosive as the behavior
of those who pander to it.
We believe that integrity is a journey, not a rulebook.
Rules and regulations cannot cover every possible ethical dilemma and there is
always something new to discover about how to approach conflicts of interest.
Furthermore, we believe that personal integrity cannot
flourish outside a context of corporate integrity. Only when every individual
completes a personal journey of moral and ethical reflection, can we
collectively complete the virtuous circle of integrity.
1. What is Integrity?
Imagine you are walking down
Threadneedle Street in the City and you find an envelope lying on the pavement.
You pick it up and find it contains $10million in bearer bonds, which anybody
can cash in. Do you hand them in to the police or take them to a dubious
offshore bank and retire? The only reason for not keeping the bonds is because
handing them in is the right thing to do, and doing the right thing means you
will lose out.
Some people in Financial Services want
to understand morality better because they have seen in recent financial
scandals how bad behavior was clearly bad for business. They know that good behavior
is good for business, so they want good behavior; this is called the business
case for ethics.
Others, however, want good behavior
simply because it is good and because it is right, even if such behavior might
be seen to be bad for business in the short term.
Now you may think that the outcome is the
same, both groups want to act fairly and morally, so never mind their different
motivations. Think of our opening example, however; does the business case for
ethics lead you to hand in the bonds?
The approach of this paper can be characterized
by the words we use to describe Financial Services. The Financial Services
sector is usually referred to as an industry; this paper will suggest that a
more helpful way to describe Financial Services is that it should have the
attributes of a profession. A professional not only gets paid for his expertise
but also for his integrity.
Integrity is a word widely used in
business today but its meaning is rarely defined, even in Annual Reports or
corporate Codes of Ethics. In this paper, we define integrity as those shared
values, attitudes and behaviors that help us to act correctly in our lives
at home, at work and in society.
Editor's note: This is the 1st of 4 articles from a paper called "Integrity in Practice" for the British Financial Services Association. I want to thank both Father Christopher and Roger Steare for permission to print their article. You can retrieve the complete copy of the article from Roger or you can contact me at principledynamics@gmail.com and I will send you a copy
About the Authors
Father Christopher is Abbot of Worth, a Benedictine monastery
in Sussex. The Abbey runs a School and a Centre for Spirituality. He has
recently co-founded The Soul Gym with Roger Steare, to help business people ‘work
out what’s right’. Born in Melbourne, Australia in 1951, Father Christopher
holds an MA from Oxford in French and Spanish and a BA from London in
philosophy and theology. He is co-author of “To Live is to Change” describing
the process of change that the Catholic Church has gone through in the last
thirty years. He was appointed headmaster of Worth School in January 1994, and
has managed two major Development Plans, while participating in “Action
Learning for Chief Executives” at Ashridge College. He was elected Abbot of
Worth in July 2002.
ROGER STEARE Ethicability
Roger Steare is an Executive Coach and Business Ethics
Consultant with a practice in the City. He studied History of Philosophy at
London University with Lord Russell, son of the philosopher Bertrand Russell. With
Christopher, he participated in “Action Learning for Chief Executives” at
Ashridge and established Roger Steare Consulting in 1998. Roger is a Fellow of
the Recruitment and Employment Confederation and an Advisor to the Talent
Foundation. He has been a frequent media commentator on workplace issues.
Background
This is the first of a 4 part article written in response to the FSA published Discussion Paper
18 “An Ethical Framework for Financial Services". In his introduction to
this paper, Professor David Jackman stated that the FSA wants “to establish a
clear and explicit, shared understanding about what integrity means in practice."
Integrity in Practice was commissioned by the FSA in order to explain the
foundations of ethical behaviour and the implications for Financial Services in
practice. The FSA’s business ethics portfolio has now moved to the newly-formed
Skills Council for Financial Services and this paper is published as a contribution
to the Ethics Forum established by the Skills Council.
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