The other day a corporate ethics officer explained how Congress’s new ethics rules have affected his firm. Whenever he learns that a senator or representative is attending a gathering hosted by his executives, he rushes around and takes all of the chairs out of the meeting room.

Chairs, it seems, are now ethically suspect. Listen carefully to the logic:

At most business meetings, even the simplest ones, hospitality requires the host to offer something — coffee, soft drinks, perhaps cookies — to the guests. More elaborate receptions provide fancier drinks and more substantial food. Chairs invite people to sit in them. But sitting down to eat looks dangerously like having a meal. And serving meals to members of Congress or their aides violates the new rules. To be safe, my friend yanks the chairs.

Shouldn’t he, then, ban hors d’oeuvres entirely? No, they’re still okay, as long as they don’t require a knife and fork — a convention known as the toothpick rule. So, as the Wall Street Journal reported last week, serving raw oysters to a legislator is acceptable, but serving oyster pasta is not. Why? Because you can eat raw oysters with toothpicks, but pasta needs silverware.

And that’s just the tip of the regulatory iceberg. According to the Journal, the measures that passed both houses early in January make it illegal for members of Congress to fly their own private planes. The rules say they can’t board any “non-governmental airplane that is not licensed … to operate for compensation or hire.” A member can, however, accept a fancy lobster dinner from a firm that doesn’t employ registered lobbyists, though they can’t take even a hot dog from one that does.

A January 19 memorandum to House members from the House ethics committee explains rather sheepishly that “the Committee intends to provide more detailed guidance as soon as practicable on issues that may arise under the new rules.” Translation: We’ll soon be sending around more rules to support these rules.

How did a nation of thoughtful, well-meaning citizens get to this pass? Admittedly, Congress needs ethics help. Gallup’s most recent survey of “confidence of institutions,” published last summer, finds that fewer than one in five Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress — well below the confidence accorded to the media, the presidency, and organized labor. But how did we get from there to toothpick ethics? How did we imagine that such rules would elevate the character and integrity of Congress? Are we seeing our lawmakers slip into self-parody? Are the ethics committees being deliberately extreme, hoping to show the absurdity of having any ethics legislation at all? Or is this a good intention gone inanely ham-fisted?

I think it’s the latter, and I think it reflects an underlying confusion in our culture about the relationship between values and rules. Simply put, when a culture perceives itself to be in ethical decline and seeks to reform, it has two options: It can strive to return to its fundamental principles and values, or it can lather itself over with rules and regulations.

The good news is that Congress wants to improve. The bad news is that it’s choosing the second option.

That’s not surprising. Option #1 is genuinely tough. In a diverse community, it takes patience and persistence to help people recognize that, despite our differences, there’s a core of shared values that includes such universals as honesty, respect, and compassion. But since this recognition flies in the face of a half-century of moral relativism — insisting that everyone has different values and that ethics is situational and individualistic — the first option is still difficult.

Which makes the Option #2 look easy. Want a new ethical climate? You simply announce and enforce new restrictions. You don’t need to explore commonalities. You don’t have to depend on others’ values, trust them to do the right thing, or give them any tools for moral reasoning. You simply have to compel unthinking obedience.

Put Option #1 into practice — in, say, the schools — and you get a resurgence of character education, often with measurable benefits. The result is a budding climate of integrity. Exercise Option #2 — in, say, the corporate world — and you get something like Sarbanes-Oxley, the accounting and governance legislation that continues to generate headaches for honest managers and loopholes for dishonest ones. The result is a regime of compliance.

Toothpick ethics enforces the notion that compliance is synonymous with ethics — that rules produce morality. And since rules are the logical outcome of any legislative process — after all, legislatures are created to pass laws — it’s not surprising that a lawmaker’s knee-jerk response to an ethical lapse is a new regulation.

Needed, instead, is a new culture of integrity — a recommitment by Congress to core values and a renewed effort to win back the public’s confidence. That won’t be popular with lawmakers, since it probably will require a body of ethical overseers outside of Congress intent on developing principles rather than writing rules. Rules will help, but they’ll never generate integrity. That only happens when you spend more time on character and trust than on chairs and toothpicks.

©2007 Institute for Global Ethics

A reader responds to last week’s commentary, “Finders, Keepers: It May Be Legal, But Is It Ethical?”:

It concerns me when the terms “legal” and “ethical” are treated as interchangeable. Laws operate only as boundaries — like the lines on a playing field. The game rules are clear concerning what is out of bounds and what behaviors are not permitted. But simply staying in bounds and obeying the rules does not guarantee skilled play; nor does staying within the letter of the law guarantee good behavior in society.

When discussing ethical dilemmas … many will dismiss an issue as too “gray.” To them, the law provides absolutes and seems preferable to unsolvable ethical debate. “What’s the point, if you don’t end up with a ‘right’ answer?” I use the TV weathercasters as a metaphor to explain why considering ethics is worthwhile. We know that weather forecasting, even with all its science, doesn’t generate perfect accuracy. Yet we still rely heavily on these forecasts. Why? Because we benefit enormously from them, however inexact. Imagine what we could do with the same reliance on ethical forecasting!

– Martha M. McCormick
Coordinator for Training and Management Consultation, Capital EAP
Albany, New York

“He determined that it was going to hamper his ability to be effective in this position.”

– Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, announcing last week’s resignation of Charles Stimson, the Defense Department’s deputy assistant secretary for detainee affairs. Stimson has been under heavy fire since a January radio interview in which he suggested that “corporations should consider severing business ties with law firms that represent Guantánamo Bay detainees,” reports the New York Times. Stimson, who named more than a dozen law firms in the interview, later apologized, saying his comments did not reflect his “core beliefs.”

VARIOUS
A variety of public-health news items, all centered on the tug-of-war between individual rights and the collective good of society, figured prominently in last week’s ethics news. Among the stories:

• The U.S. federal government last week released recommended guidelines for preventing contagion in the event of a severe flu outbreak, calling on the public and local governments to sacrifice freedom of travel, forego various leisure activities, disrupt children’s education, and lose money from employment. Among other recommendations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said schools may have to be closed for as long as three months and events such as ballgames should be canceled altogether. Dr. Martin Cetron, director of global migration and quarantine for the Centers, told the New York Times that while staying home from school and work is “not easy … the only thing that’s harder is facing the consequences. That will be intolerable.” Other ethical aspects of a possible pandemic continue to dominate planning on many levels in many venues: In Manitoba, Canada, for example, it was disclosed that a panel of physicians is working to devise a set of ethics guidelines that will offer guidance on dilemmas such as whether critically ill patients or healthy patients with a greater chance of long-term survival should receive treatment first, according to a report from the Winnipeg Free Press.
• A fierce debate erupted last week after Texas became the first U.S. state to require that 11- and 12-year-old girls be vaccinated against the human papilloma virus, which causes cervical cancer and is spread exclusively through sexual contact. The Reuters news agency reports that some religious groups and parents’ organizations argue that the vaccination program will encourage premarital sex. Parents can opt out of the program if they sign an affidavit saying they object to the vaccination on religious or philosophical grounds.
• The giant hotel chain Marriott announced that it will remove trans-fats from the food it severs at its 2,300 North American facilities. Trans-fat, an artificially produced substance that provides an appealing flavor and cooking convenience, has been shown to promote heart disease. USA Today notes that the move by Marriott is part of a trend based, in part, in anticipation that many local governments will ban the substance.
• In a move that runs counter to its romantic images of smoky cafes, France — the nation that gave us the word cigarette — last week imposed a ban on smoking in any “closed and covered” public space such as workplaces, schools, and train stations. Cafes and restaurants are slated to go smoke-free next year, reports the International Herald Tribune. While French officials say the move will be a plus for public health, many in France are decrying it as an attack on their personal freedom.
• Residents of Jakarta, Indonesia, are openly defying a government ban on raising domestic poultry that was imposed in an effort to stem the spread of bird flu. The Times of London reports that while local officials gave residents two weeks’ notice to destroy their chickens, and about 100,000 have already been destroyed, it is estimated that more than a million remain alive. Officials say there are too few inspectors and too many chickens for them to enforce the ban.

LONDON
British prime minister Tony Blair, under pressure to step down amid a widening probe into allegations that his party sold positions in the House of Lords in return for political loans, is saying it would be wrong for him to leave office before the investigation is complete.

Blair is in an increasingly precarious position because of the complaints of senior members of his Labour party, who say that the controversy is damaging their political prospects, reports the Birmingham-based ITV television network.

According to a report from the BBC, the comments from party members came after it was revealed that police have questioned Blair twice as a witness in the matter.

Blair insists he will be vindicated by the Scotland Yard probe and denies any wrongdoing, reports the Manchester Evening News.

Blair also said he sees no point in further pleading his case. “I am not going to beg for my character in front of anyone,” he said, according to a report from the Scotsman. “People can make up their own mind about me. I know what type of person I am, and I am not going to get into a situation where I am pleading for my integrity.”

MOSCOW and SAN FRANCISCO
The do-it-yourself digital video revolution figured in two ethics-related stories last week:

• A cell-phone video has spurred public outrage and an investigation by Russian authorities after the spread of a clip depicting babies in a hospital who were gagged, reportedly because staff did not want to hear them crying. The BBC reports that while Russians are used to hospital scandals, this particular case, which occurred in a city in the southern Urals, has touched a raw nerve and is being covered widely by the Russian media.
• YouTube, the wildly popular online video sharing service, has agreed to remove more than 100,000 unauthorized segments belonging to the media firm Viacom. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the clips in question range from Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” to “SpongeBob SquarePants.” Chronicle reporter Ellen Lee notes that the dispute “highlights the dilemmas media companies face as they try to keep control of their material in the digital age. Since exploding onto the Web less than two years ago, YouTube has drawn ire — as well as millions of loyal fans — for its vast and rapidly growing library of videos, many of them copyrighted clips from popular television shows and movies.”

WASHINGTON
The head of a new task force that will consider ways to enforce ethics in the U.S. House of Representatives says he will examine ethics practices in various states and in the private sector in order to see which models work best.

Congressman Michael Capuano (D-Mass.), named by House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to chair a task force that will determine whether House ethics should be overseen by an independent body, told the Boston Globe that he will be “going to go to class for a while” to learn about “what is out there, what is this committee interested in doing — if anything? And what can we sell? We might like A, but if we can’t sell it, we’ll settle for B.”

Members of the eight-person task force, chosen by Pelosi and minority leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), include four members from the Democratic party and four from the Republican party, according to the Hill, a publication covering Congress.

Both houses of Congress have been jittery about any outside control of their ethics problems, and the Senate last month voted 71-27 against creating an external panel, Time magazine reports. Many senators argued that their ethics committee had compiled a good record of pursuing charges against members.

But House ethics enforcement has been characterized often as feeble at best, and the new Democratic leadership made ethics reform its campaign centerpiece.

The report from the task force is due May 1.

In related news, the Federal Times, a publication for government managers, reports that while the House and Senate both passed measures to ban lobbyist-funded travel for lawmakers and their staffs, the restrictions have some loopholes, including a provision that would allow nonprofit organizations, even those affiliated with lobbying groups, to fund travel. Also, groups that pay lobbyists will still be allowed to fund one-day trips for House members to visit, give a speech, or sit on a panel.

WASHINGTON
The perjury trial of former White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby got under way last week, exposing some of the ethical fault lines in government-press relations, according to press reports.

Among the developments were questions about the apparently spotty memory of former New York Times reporter Judith Miller and the seemingly inconsistent handling of confidential sourcing by former Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, according to the Associated Press.

Cooper acknowledged using material that was supposedly “off the record,” a term normally meaning that information cannot be used in print, but said he considered an off-the-record comment by Libby as confirmation that the material could be used.

Libby is charged with lying to a grand jury about his role in releasing the identity of a CIA operative, allegedly as an act of revenge for criticism of the Iraq war by the operative’s husband, a former ambassador.

According to a report from CNN, Miller and Cooper also came under scrutiny for what Libby’s attorneys attempted to characterize as sloppy note-taking.

Ethicists interviewed by Bloomberg noted that the Libby prosecution has dramatically shaken the ground beneath implied agreements of confidentiality between reporters and their sources after journalists were pressured — by the threat of incarceration and by actual jail time — into incriminating them.

“To turn a trust position into a betrayal … [creates] ramifications way beyond this case. I really have to ask whether this case is worth this sort of erosion of the reporter-source relationship,” Jane Kirtley, an expert on the press and the law who teaches at the University of Minnesota, told Bloomberg.

Critics argue that by turning journalists into de-facto agents of law enforcement, they cannot win the trust of sources on all sides of a controversy and thus cannot fully report on issues.

Another emerging controversy centered on release of audiotapes of Libby’s grand jury testimony. Fourteen media organizations filed court papers asking the presiding judge in the trial to allow them access to the tapes. MSNBC, a party to the request, says the release of the tapes would not pose a threat to a fair trial, though the judge initially expressed skepticism.

NEW YORK
The high-profile relationship between a finance reporter and a Citigroup executive has raised questions about the ethical boundaries between journalists and those they cover.

Citigroup executive Todd Thomson, who headed the company’s brokerage, was fired recently because of his lavish spending, according to the Reuters news agency, which noted that Thomson spent $5 million to sponsor a show hosted in part by CNBC news anchor Maria Bartiromo.

Directors also objected to Thomson’s co-opting the corporate jet after arranging for “Bartiromo to speak to some Citigroup clients in Hong Kong and Shanghai.” After the meetings, Bartiromo flew home with Thomson, “bumping several company bankers from the plane,” notes the New York Times.

Bartiromo also was named to a board that Thomson founded at the University of Pennsylvania.

Bartiromo had interviewed Thomson several times in the course of her news assignments, and had covered Citigroup regularly.

Bloomberg quotes Bob Steele, who teaches journalism ethics at the Poynter Institute, an ethics think tank in Florida, as saying that the relationship gives the public reason to question whether they are getting objective reporting because Bartiromo, like all reporters, is expected not to get too close with or accept favors from people or companies she covers.

CNBC defended Bartiromo, saying that her travel was business related, approved by management, and involved legitimate business assignments, according to reports from Forbes and the U.K. Guardian.

Bartiromo, a glamorous financial reporter dubbed the “Money Honey,” also attracted some scrutiny last week when she filed a trademark application to protect her nickname and position her launch of a line of toys and clothes, USA Today reports.

NEW YORK
Fourteen New York City firefighters, including a deputy chief, a battalion commander, and a captain, were accused last week of submitting phony college diplomas in order to receive promotions.

The city’s Department of Investigation said the officers claimed to have taken classes at St. Regis University, a defunct establishment that described itself as a “distance learning center” operating out of Liberia, according to the New York Daily News.

Department of Investigation commissioner Rose Gill Hearn also faulted the Fire Department for being careless in evaluating the credentials. “The Fire Department accepted some of the worthless diplomas, obtained from an Internet diploma mill, because the Department did not take sufficient steps to verify their authenticity,” she said, according to Newsday.

She added that the dishonest firefighters “compromised the credibility of the promotion process in the FDNY.”

The New York Post reports that the Department of Investigation uncovered the phony degrees after an anonymous tip.

Acceptance of the degrees may have resulted in some confusion between St. Regis University, which is now out of business after falsely claiming official approval by the Liberian government, and a legitimate Massachusetts institution called Regis College, according to a report in the Advance of Staten Island, New York.

No criminal charges or disciplinary actions have been filed yet in the case, according to press reports.

BOSTON
As fans went into a frenzy last week over Super Bowl XLI, another story also captured headlines: the ethical implications of subjecting young men to a sport in which concussive injury increasingly is linked to mental and physical impairments in middle age.

In a page-one story, the New York Times last week profiled Ted Johnson, who helped the New England Patriots win three Super Bowls.

Times reporter Alan Schwarz writes: “Now, [Johnson] says, he forgets people’s names, misses appointments and, because of an addiction to amphetamines, can become so terrified of the outside world that he locks himself alone inside his Boston apartment in bed with the blinds drawn for days at a time.”

“Mr. Johnson’s decline began, he said, in August 2002, with a concussion he sustained in a preseason game against the New York Giants. He sustained another four days later during a practice, after Patriots Coach Bill Belichick went against the recommendation of the team’s trainer, Johnson said, and submitted him to regular on-field contact,” Schwarz wrote.

Belichick declined to comment when interviewed by the Times.

The Boston Globe reports that Johnson, 34, says that while he was listed as having three or four concussions in his career, he says the real number is “closer to 30, maybe even more…. I’ve been dinged so many times I’ve lost count.”

Globe writer Jackie MacMullan reports that Johnson decided to go public with his illnesses after the recent suicide of former NFL defensive back Andre Waters, who had multiple concussions and suffered from depression.

KNBC-TV in Los Angeles reports that some researchers are warning that the dangers of repeated concussions are not limited to professional players, with high school and college athletes also at risk of future mental impairment.

According to a report from the Detroit Free Press, parents in Michigan are leading an effort to get schools to implement programs to more effectively detect and prevent concussions. According to the Free Press, some researchers argue that the “shake-it-off” attitude that sends youngsters back onto the playing field after being hit in the head is a particular danger to children because maturing brains are slower to heal.

From the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission:

“The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) last year received a total of 75,768 discrimination charges against private sector employers, the first increase in charge filings since 2002….

“The year-end statistics … show that charges based on race (27,238), sex (23,247), and retaliation (22,555) were the most frequent allegations, as in past years. Other frequently cited charge bases were disability (15,625), age (13,569), national origin (8,327), and religion (2,541). All charge categories edged up from FY 2005, with the exception of age and equal pay. Individuals may allege multiple types of discrimination in a single charge filing.

“Additionally, 12,025 sexual harassment charges and a record 4,901 pregnancy discrimination charges were filed with the EEOC and with state and local Fair Employment Practices Agencies combined. A record 15 percent of sexual harassment charges were filed by men….

“The FY 2006 data also show that the EEOC:

• “Resolved 74,308 private sector charges, with a historically high merit factor rate of more than 22 percent (representing favorable outcomes for charging parties). A record 8,201 cases were resolved through voluntary mediation….
• “Recovered a total of approximately $274 million in monetary relief for charging parties: $44 million through litigation and $230 million through administrative enforcement, including mediation. Additionally, the agency obtained substantial non-monetary relief, such as employer training, policy implementation, reasonable accommodations, and other measures to promote discrimination-free workplaces….”

“Without civic morality, communities perish; without personal morality, their survival has no value.”

–Bertrand Russell (English mathematician and philosopher, 1872-1970)