B U S I N E S S E T H I C S :^)

An FBI Agent Stands Up for Her Principles

The trauma of losing an important job is what makes people like Colleen Rowley—a woman who was willing to risk losing the job she had worked for all her life and, by extension, her career as an FBI agent, to stand up for her principles—that much more remarkable. When she was a kid, her favorite television show was The Man From U.N.C.L.E., a spoof about two handsome agents whose mission was to save the world from evil. When she was in fifth grade, Rowley wrote to the show’s producers asking if she could become the next agent from U.N.C.L.E. Recognizing a patriot in the making, the producers directed her towards the FBI, where the real special agents worked. Rowley contacted the FBI for information and learned that they did not hire women as special agents. But the determined youngster had the foresight to recognize that would change. She knew what she wanted to be when she grew up, and nothing was going to get in her way.

She took pride in being a pioneer, part of the first wave of women fighting to be taken seriously in the bureau’s male-dominated, buttondown culture. She worked her way up the ladder as an FBI lawyer— handling applications for searches and wiretaps, working organizedcrime cases in New York City, and becoming, in 1995, chief counsel in the Minneapolis field office. She won a reputation as a highly disciplined professional who was opinionated, principled, and supremely devoted to her job.

All of this helps explain why she put her career on the line to blow the whistle on her beloved FBI in the wake of the terrorist attacks on our country. When she wrote a secret 13-page memo to the FBI revealing problems she had witnessed relative to the terrorist attacks, she was on a private mission to rescue her beloved employer from unethical practices, not a personal crusade to reprimand them publicly. But when the memo was leaked to the press, Rowley was thrust into the unenviable position of becoming front-page news.

175

:^) C H A P T E R 9

Although it was easy for the rest of us (spectators) to be outraged at what the FBI had not done to prevent the terrorist attacks, I wonder how many of us would have had the kind of courage and integrity to do what Colleen Rowley did. I have a feeling not too many.

A Lack of Ethics

When advertising executives James Patterson and Peter Kim set out to “take the moral pulse of America,” they discovered that most Americans are willing to do anything for money: abandon their families, change religions, lie, cheat, steal, or even murder.

Touching, isn’t it? And it doesn’t get any better. Take a look at some of the other results they documented in The Day America Told the Truth (1991, Prentice Hall):

■Lying has become part of our national character. Just about every one (91 percent) of us lies—regularly. In fact, most people can’t make it through a week without lying. Some can’t even make it through a day.

■When asked what changes they would make to better fulfill their potential, most people wanted to be richer and thinner. “Smarter” ran a very distant second. Becoming a “better person” didn’t even make the rankings.

■When queried about the “sleaziest ways to make a living,” car and insurance salespeople, Wall Street executives, real-estate agents, lawyers, and investment brokers ranked at the bottom of the moral sewer.

■There is only one clear moral authority and it isn’t God, church leaders, teachers, or even parents—it’s the individual. That is to say, nearly all respondents (93 percent) believe that they and they alone determine what is and isn’t moral in their lives. And their actions bear this out. Most respondents (more than 80 percent) report that they’ve violated a law or an established religious rule because they thought the law was wrong.

176

B U S I N E S S E T H I C S :^)

So much for the wisdom of Aristotle, who believed that happiness was a function of virtue. He thought that if you worked hard to live as an ethical person, you’d feel good about yourself and your place in the community. Apparently, we prefer to live out the concerns of Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, who remarked: “Suspect your neighbor as yourself.”

In modern society we expect money to make us happy, so we pursue it with religious fervor. You’d never know from the way we exalt it that the “bottom line” is morally neutral. It won’t get you into heaven. It won’t make you a good person or a bad one (although how you make your living has a moral value). Masquerading as “realists,” some people would have you believe that the whole world is a jungle where people watch out solely for themselves and only the cruel survive. A “bottom-line” mentality has become a convenient excuse to indulge predatory instincts. What happened to human evolution and the advances of civilization? Do we really want to go back to the jungle and kill each other for dinner?

The reality is that you can be a good person, live an ethical life, and still make lots of money. You can even use your power to accomplish some good. Principles and ideals aren’t a luxury that you can’t afford. They’re a necessity you can’t live without if you want to maintain your integrity amid chaos and corruption.

Although we laughed when actor Michael Douglas’ Wall Street character Gordon Gekko declared that “greed is good,” the line wasn’t quite as funny when we are constantly reminded how deeply held this cherished belief runs within the business community. But don’t look to the ivory towers of academia for better behavior. There you’ll encounter people such as renowned historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose, who have been accused of plagiarism, or Pulitzer Prize–winning authors inventing experiences in Vietnam and teaching them as biographical truth. Nor can we look to the hallowed sanctuaries of religion for comfort. Nothing has been more disturbing than the revelations of insidious and widespread pedophilia, child

177

:^) C H A P T E R 9

molestation, cover-ups, and corruption among the clergy within the Roman Catholic Church.

One powerful antidote to the deterioration of moral and ethical behavior in the workplace lies in the realm of character education. Character education is the deliberate effort to develop good character based on core virtues that are good for the individual and good for society. William Bennett, the former Secretary of Education, has become a well-known expert on the subject of character education. In his book The Moral Compass, he has gathered hundreds of stories, poems, and essays that illustrate virtues and values. The stories are arranged according to life stages and challenges from childhood through adulthood, including the challenges of perseverance, compassion, community, responsibility, and faith.

The Argument for Business Ethics

Arnold Hiatt, the former chairman of Stride Rite Corporation, sees public service as “enlightened self-interest.” Citing his company’s family-leave policy as an example, he notes that the program costs next to nothing financially. In human terms, however, it makes a statement of caring that creates goodwill with employees and motivates them to be more productive.

Unfortunately, most managers and business executives are more inclined to view profits—not people—as the lifeblood of their organizations. Profits are the master they serve. People only get in the way. That kind of thinking makes the phrase “business ethics” sound like an oxymoron and drives ethical people underground into the ranks of the alienated and dissatisfied, or out of the corporate sector altogether.

In many cases, the “bottom-line” rationale is a convenient excuse to operate “below the line” of human decency and social responsibility under the guise of good business practices. But is it really good practice to cheat your customers and exploit your employees for the sake of short-term profits? Apparently, a lot of people think so.

178

B U S I N E S S E T H I C S :^)

In The Predatory Society (1995, Oxford University Press), author Paul Blumberg examined deceptive business practices. His research uncovered 600 different accounts of consumer fraud (as reported by company employees), including the following:

■Retail establishments that mark prices up before sales.

■Gas stations that sell regular fuel as high-test.

■Auto mechanics who spray-paint old car parts and sell them as new.

■Pharmacies that sell generics and charge brand-name prices.

These incidents didn’t even occur in the industries or professions that respondents to the Patterson and Kim study considered particularly unethical.

On the other hand, respondents did say they personally would do anything for money. Well, here’s proof-positive they weren’t kidding. In each and every case, profit motive was the force that drove businesses to consciously engage in fraudulent and deceptive business practices. The paradox for capitalists is that many profit-minded people apparently think the best way to make money is to trick consumers into thinking products are good quality. Why not actually produce and sell quality products, instead?

The spectacular cases make headlines when they’re uncovered. In 1992, a once-celebrated Park Avenue attorney named Harvey Myerson was convicted of overbilling clients, including Shearson Lehman Hutton, more than $2 million. Besides ordering younger partners to inflate their hours (or else lose their jobs), he was happy to have Shearson pay his personal expenses large and small. These included family vacations, travel on the Concorde, and dry cleaning of his toupee.

Equally troubling is the well-publicized case of consumer fraud by two high-ranking Beech-Nut executives who were jailed and fined for marketing bogus apple juice as “100% fruit juice.” In doing so, they

179

:^) C H A P T E R 9

tricked millions of unsuspecting consumer-parents into feeding their children what was mostly a mixture of beet sugar, apple flavor, caramel color, and corn syrup. They rationalized their behavior by saying that “everybody else does it, too.” But of course, not everybody acts in a way that brings them a more than 350-count federal indictment.

Prior to this incident, these men were not criminals. Both were considered upstanding pillars of their respective communities. Unfortunately, they must have left their spiritual ideals and morals at the church door on Sundays, in order to wear the hat of “corporate patriot” again on Monday mornings. For that moral failing, they both went to jail, were fined $100,000 apiece, and racked up more than $2 million in penalties for their beloved Beech-Nut. They also destroyed consumer trust, shattered their own reputations, and ravaged the organizational spirit. These events didn’t make employees proud to call themselves members of the Beech-Nut family.

When Co-Workers Do Wrong

It’s easy to conclude as Lord Acton did that, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Yet eschewing power is hardly the answer. Powerlessness also corrupts. How else can you explain why all those junior partners who worked for Myerson were so willing to risk disbarment rather than activate some kind of personal moral compass? Obviously, they were more scared of losing their jobs than their licenses to practice law. So they caved in to the pressure to “do the wrong thing.” But were there no other alternatives available to them?

Fortunately, the tide seems to be turning. After a series of corporate scandals (such as Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom, Tyco, Healthsouth, and so on), there is more individual and collective support for those who dare to stand and fight. But the process can be arduous and emotionally draining.

180

B U S I N E S S E T H I C S :^)

Bob McIntyre was a Financial Consultant and Assistant Vice President with Merrill Lynch when he discovered that one of his supervisors made discretionary (unauthorized) trades in a client’s account. Seeking to resolve the conflict amicably, he approached his supervising broker, who agreed (in theory) that what he was doing was incorrect and then continued the unauthorized trading. Seeing that the problem wasn’t resolved in the client’s best interest, McIntyre elevated his complaint up the food chain to his resident vice president, who instructed him that the matter was to “go no further.”

However, McIntyre did press on. He drafted a complaint letter to the company’s Ethics Hotline. Shortly thereafter, he noticed that he was being treated differently by management, and the company moved him to another division. After a six-week absence to attend to his mother during her terminal illness, his manager immediately placed him on probation, and then terminated him a few months later. McIntyre sued for breach of contract and prevailed. The NASD ordered Merrill to pay damages. However, he admits that the entire process has been a terrible ordeal for his family, and wonders whether he did the right thing.

“Truth be told, I felt as though I was compelled to take action,” McIntyre says. “I just couldn’t tolerate the length and breadth of the deceptive conduct toward an elderly client.”

Ditto for a financial analyst who sued WorldCom Inc., alleging that the company instructed him to falsify financial records and then fired him for his failure to comply.

Given the massive business number of high-profile business scandals, Congress has enacted legislation to combat corporate corruption. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act includes measures to protect “whistle-blowers” who report financial wrongdoing, the first-ever that apply to employees at all public companies.

But	that doesn’t mean	that employers won’t retaliate. Should
you	choose to take the	high road of ethical conduct, you’ll still

181

:^) C H A P T E R 9

undoubtedly have to struggle to figure out how to save your job and still do the right thing.

There’s Strength in Numbers

You don’t necessarily have to take on the establishment singlehandedly. Some people find strength and courage by banding together. When a high-ranking human resources executive ordered his benefits and compensation staff to “fudge their numbers” for the year-end audit, they collectively marched into his boss’s office to register a protest. This team power play effectively put an end to his unethical demands.

Sadly, not every ethical professional can find power in numbers. A quality-control inspector for an outdoor-equipment manufacturer in California was upset by the lax standards her colleagues and supervisor were exhibiting toward certain products. This placed her in a practical and ethical quandary. She was uncomfortable with what she saw happening around her. Yet she feared reprisals if she went over her coworkers’ heads and complained. And because her supervisor was one of the offending parties, she felt it would be futile to register a complaint with him.

Finally, she decided to rely on her sense of what’s right to do, as well as her firsthand impression of the CEO as a fair-minded and responsive leader. Her instincts were good. The CEO took her complaint seriously and, without revealing the source of his information or jeopardizing her position, investigated and rectified the problem.

Doing an end run around the person you directly report to isn’t always advisable. Before attempting it, you should evaluate your boss’s boss realistically. If it seems unlikely that the executive will handle the problem discreetly, you might want to look for another, more direct solution.

An administrative assistant knew a member of her department was fudging expense reports, and it made her uncomfortable. Rather than

182