Ethics Newsline®

“Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson (U.S. philosopher and poet, 1803-1882)

Survey finds divergent views between many European countries and respondents in the United States.

From Harris Interactive:

“As the United States gets ready to enter an election year, there are interesting differences in the perceptions of adults in the five largest European countries, especially compared to Americans, as to what the election may mean and how important it is. Two-thirds of Americans (66%) and over half of Italians (55%), Germans (52%) and Spaniards (51%) think the U.S. election is extremely or very important to people in other countries as do a plurality (43%) of British adults. The French, however, disagree, as just over one-third (38%) say the election is extremely or very important to other countries….

“One of the interesting story lines with this U.S. election is the possibility of two firsts — a female president and a black president. Over half of adults in France (56%), Spain (56%), Germany (55%), and Italy (53%) as well as a plurality (43%) in Great Britain, believe that electing a woman as president would have a positive effect on the USA….The one exception is in the U.S. Just three in ten (29%) Americans believe electing a woman would have a positive effect on the USA while one-quarter (26%) say it would have a negative effect and 23 percent believe it would have equally positive and negative effects….

“Looking at the possibility of the first black president, the numbers are not as strong. Half of Spaniards (50%) and pluralities of French (49%), Italians (44%), Germans (43%) and Britons (43%) believe electing a black man would have a positive effect on the USA. Again, Americans are less positive as just one-third (33%) say this would have a positive effect while 28 percent say the effect would be equally positive and negative….

“In looking at who would make the best U.S. president (among 10 listed candidates) Hillary Clinton is the top choice in all six countries. Barack Obama is second in France and Germany and tied for second with Rudy Giuliani in the U.S. Rudy Giuliani comes in second in Italy, Spain, and Great Britain. When it comes to who will actually win the 2008 Presidential election, Hillary Clinton is again on top — in fact, over half of Italians (51%) believe she will win. The only other candidate in double digits in any of the countries is Rudy Giuliani and 11 percent of Americans believe he will actually win the election.

“Looking at the position of the U.S. in the world under President Bush, there is a consensus — the position of the U.S. is weaker in the world today then it was at the beginning of the Bush presidency. In fact, Americans are the ones leading this charge as almost three in five (58%) of them say weaker, followed by 57 percent of British adults and over half of Italians (53%) and Germans (52%). Just under half (49%) of French adults and 46 percent of Spaniards believe the same.

“The new president, whoever he or she might be, inherits a good deal of international concerns. As to the most urgent foreign policy issue for the new president, for adults in five of the countries, Iraq comes out as the top issue. Italy is the exception as Italians believe the Middle East settlement is the most urgent issue, followed by Iran….

“The role the new president should play is one where those in Europe agree on one idea, while those in the U.S. feel a little differently. Two-thirds or more in the five European countries (between 65% and 77%) believe the U.S. president should be an equal voice among all western leaders. In the U.S., just under half (46%) also agree with this idea….

“One reason the U.S. needs to have such an important role is many believe the U.S. poses a threat to world peace A majority in Spain (56%) and pluralities in France (49%), Great Britain (48%) and Germany (48%) as well as 37 percent in Italy believe the U.S. poses a major threat to world peace. Even one-quarter (28%) in the U.S. believe the U.S. poses a major threat while 27 percent of Americans say the U.S. poses a minor threat to world peace….”

For the full press release from Harris Interactive, Dec. 11, click here.

Globe & Mail report cautions that seemingly benign workplace dynamics can really be an ethics minefield.

TORONTO
You don’t have to be in the executive suite or upper management to become swept up in workplace corruption, notes York University business professor Len Karakowsky in a column carried last week by the Toronto Globe & Mail.

He cites the case of a low-level accountant at Enron who was found guilty of taking part in the scandal and quietly served a five-month sentence.

Referring to data from the 2007 National Business Ethics Survey from the Ethics Resource Center, Karakowsky notes that the root of workplace corruption is often “seemingly benign workplace dynamics and practices.”

Companies with a weak ethical culture experienced more frequent workplace misconduct than those with a stronger ethical culture. Translation: “Team players” may be valuable, but they need to be acutely aware of the “team” and its culture.

Another pitfall, according to Karakowsky, is viewing your company through rose-colored glasses.

“Although we want to believe in the integrity of our leaders,” he writes, “an unwavering faith in our company can be dangerous. You need to judge the moral implications of your work based on its own merits, not on the credentials of your supervisor. You need to ask questions (and get answers) instead of blindly following orders. This may be one of the most challenging traps to confront since it forces you to question authority. Your response to this trap may well have grave ramifications, including risking your job or your reputation. However, ignoring the trap may land you in much deeper trouble.”

Source: Globe & Mail, Dec. 15.

In addition to kudos, Le Hien Duc also receives her share of death threats.

HANOI
A 76-year-old Vietnamese grandmother known for her relentless and fearless fight against graft has received a major award from a global anti-corruption watchdog.

Transparency International said Le Hien Duc was chosen for the group’s annual Integrity Award for being a “resourceful anti-corruption fighter,” the BBC reports.

While Vietnam is awash in corruption, the culture generally does not condone confronting authority. But Duc, according to the London-based Independent, has made a habit of personally tracking down high- and low-level officials and holding them accountable for their misdeeds.

According to a report from the Agence France-Presse, she has pursued allegations of graft in the school system as well as bribes solicited by traffic cops. Her efforts in hounding one bribe-demanding cop resulted in his demotion.

“Many police carry my photo in their wallets so they can recognize me on the street,” she said.

She has received several death threats recently, according to the AFP, including an instance in which a coffin was left outside her door.

According to a press release from Transparency International, the retired schoolteacher’s persistence “is an inspiration and sets an example for anyone who has been wronged through corruption.”

Duc shares the award with a Swiss criminologist.

Sources: BBC, Dec. 15 — Independent, Dec. 15 — AFP, Dec. 15.

University of California says funds in question were never promised to high-profile dean who was fired after nearly three years of disputes.

SAN FRANCISCO
The dean of the medical school at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) was fired last week, and claimed that the move came about because he raised questions about financial irregularities at the school.

According to the New York Times, David Kessler, the former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, wrote in an email to faculty members that he had “discovered a series of financial irregularities that predated my appointment” and that he “endeavored to work with the university ever since to solve these problems.”

San Francisco radio station KCBS reports that the university says it investigated all of Kessler’s claims and found them groundless. UCSF also says it has a policy of protecting whistle-blowers from retaliation.

The Los Angeles Times says Kessler’s firing followed nearly three years of increasingly bitter disputes over accounting practices at the university.

At the heart of the dispute, according to the Times, is a dispute over how much money Kessler said he was promised he would have at his disposal to recruit faculty and mount research projects.

The university denies that Kessler was misled, saying he was never promised such funding, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Sources: New York Times, Dec. 15 — San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 15 — KCBS, Dec. 15 — Los Angeles Times, Dec. 15.

“Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in an advanced age; and if we do not plant it while young, it will give us no shade when we grow old.”

– Lord Chesterfield (English statesman and author, 1694-1773)

Study examines cultural, political, and gender lines in how the public views female leaders.

From the Pew Research Center:

“On December 10, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner will be inaugurated as Argentina’s first female president. The senator and first lady will join 11 other women who currently serve as their countries’ presidents or prime ministers, including Michelle Bachelet in neighboring Chile. But while women worldwide are making gains in all levels of government, the most recent Pew Global Attitudes survey of 46 countries and the Palestinian territories finds that publics around the world express mixed opinions about women and political leadership.

“The countries of Western Europe, North America and Latin America generally include the highest proportions of respondents who rate men and women as equally good political leaders. Roughly two-thirds in Kirchner’s country (68%) express that view, while 17% say men are better leaders and 9% prefer women. In the United States, fully three-quarters say men and women make equally good political leaders, and that opinion is even more widespread in Western Europe.

“By contrast, majorities in Mali (65%), the Palestinian territories (64%), Kuwait (62%), Pakistan (54%), Bangladesh (52%) and Ethiopia (51%) say men make better political leaders than women, as do nearly half of Jordanians (49%) and Nigerians (48%). Russians are also divided: 44% say men and women make equally good leaders while 40% say men are better. Only in Brazil do more people say women make better political leaders than say men do: 15% of Brazilians say women make better political leaders and 10% say men are better leaders….

“Views of political leadership often split along gender lines as well, with men more likely than women to say men make better political leaders and women more likely than men to say either that women make better leaders or that both are equally good. This is especially the case in Africa as well as in several Asian, Middle Eastern, and Eastern European countries….

“In the United States, where Hillary Clinton currently leads the Democratic primary field in national polls, opinions about gender and political leadership reflect partisan rather than gender differences….”

For the full press release from the Pew Research Center, Dec. 5, click here.

Ethical consumerism sharply on the rise, according to survey; Financial Times warns, though, that in rush to supply ethical investment funds, some firms blunder; also, ethical holiday gifts are becoming hot items.

LONDON
Britain, emerging as the international test case for various methods and philosophies of ethical spending and investment, was the focus of several related stories last week:

• A report from a major bank finds that U.K. households spent almost twice as much on so-called ethical goods last year as they did five years ago, the BBC reports. The Co-operative Bank says that last year’s outlay was up 81 percent from 2002. The average U.K. household spent about $1,300 on ethical goods last year. The biggest ethical niches, according to a summary from the U.K. Press Association, were in the categories of food, clothing, energy, transport, and financial products. The bank defines ethical consumerism as personal allocation of funds, including consumption and investment, based on a particular issue, such as human rights, social justice, the environment, or animal welfare, according to the U.K. Guardian.
• In the face of skyrocketing demand for ethical financial vehicles, more U.K. fund managers are finding they have no choice but to give the public what it wants. But the problem, claims an analysis from the London-based Financial Times, is that many funds don’t have the knowledge, experience, or will to provide a credible ethical fund. The publication cites instances where investment firms claiming to offer an ethical program put money in companies involved in alcohol, animal testing, gambling, and pornography. And, claims the report, some funds will invest in companies that acknowledge ethical problems while doing little to confront them.
• Sky News reports that ethical and environmentally friendly presents are at the top of many holiday gift lists this year. In a survey of more than 1,000 British adults, the environmental charity Cool Earth found that consumers planned to buy a wide range of green stocking-stuffers, including solar-powered chargers for consumer electronics, wind-up radios, and bicycles. However, some environmentally friendly presents appear not to be catching on — including stationery made from recycled elephant dung.

Sources: Financial Times, Dec. 4 — Sky News, Dec. 2 — BBC, Nov. 30 — Guardian, Nov. 30.

AP analysis looks at moral arguments centering on Myanmar but with implications across the globe.

BANGKOK
An analysis from the Associated Press examines an issue rekindled after the recent crackdown on pro-democracy protestors in Myanmar: Is it ethical to do business with repressive regimes?

Some businesses, the AP notes, cut ties with the country formerly known as Burma after the brutal repression, but others continue to do business there, arguing that they are helping the impoverished people of the country by creating jobs.

French energy firm Total argues that cutting off Myanmar will hurt ordinary people more than the ruling regime and could impair the growth of democracy.

“We feel the country would have evolved much more if more responsible companies had remained,” Jean-Francois Lassalle, Total’s vice president of public affairs for exploration and production, told the AP. “Development of human rights goes along with the development of the economy.”

While Total and Chevron both provide health care benefits to workers in Myanmar, some activists have derided such actions as propaganda designed to provide cover for profitable ties with authoritarian leaders.

The debate is part of an overarching issue of whether sanctions as a whole actually work. According to the AP analysis, there are activist nations and groups on both sides of the issue. South Korea, for example, is investing in North Korea in an attempt to convince the rogue state to abandon its nuclear weapons program. Other nations are taking the opposite, punitive, approach when dealing with Iran.

“This is not a slam-dunk kind of debate,” W. Michael Hoffman, the executive director of the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts, told the AP.

Source: AP, Dec. 4.

British newspaper publishers experiment with pop-up ads triggered by mouse movements; insurance companies flirt with new systems that monitor teen drivers; Facebook allows users to completely shut off controversial ad platform that broadcasts their purchasing habits.

SAN FRANCISCO
Intrusive technology made ethics news last week in several stories:

• British publishers are experimenting with a new online advertising system in which pop-up ads appear when readers roll over key words in the text. But the newspaper trade journal Editor & Publisher reports that some U.S. papers, including the New York Times, have expressed ethics concerns about the ad platform. The manufacturer of the system denies that there is any danger of compromising news writing, saying that editors will not be asked to include words keyed to the pop-ups.
• New systems that allow parents to keep tabs on teenage drivers are ready to roll out, but ethics concerns are slowing the adoption of the technology. The Wall Street Journal reports that some of the systems, offered through insurance companies, report details of speed, location, and braking, and provide video of the driver and passengers. But the Journal notes that insurer State Farm isn’t buying in just yet, citing privacy concerns. A spokesman for Allstate told the Journal that while parents may want to know what their teens are doing in the car, they don’t necessarily want the insurance company to know or use the information to deny a claim.
• Following intense criticism, social-networking site Facebook last week said it will now allow customers to completely opt out of the controversial “Beacon” advertising system, which broadcasts details of members’ purchases to other Facebook customers on a user’s personal network as part of a campaign of “personal referral” advertising, PC Worldreports. The company infuriated many users by enrolling them in the data-sharing plan by default, requiring that they actively “opt out” if they did not want their information shared.

Sources: Editor & Publisher, Dec. 5 — Wall Street Journal, Dec. 5 — PC World, Dec. 5.

Survey finds little meaningful change in corporate behavior in post-Enron America; teens questioned say it is often acceptable to cheat, plagiarize, or use violence; new AP/Yahoo poll says voters put highest value on ethics and honesty — but don’t rate party frontrunners particularly highly in those categories.

NEW YORK
Three recent surveys take an interesting slant on ethics in the United States:

• Six years after a series of high-profile scandals rocked the business landscape, there has been little if any meaningful reduction in the risk of unethical behavior in corporate America, claims the Ethics Resource Center’s 2007 National Business Ethics Survey. Interviews with about 2,000 employees at a variety of U.S. companies shows many of them witness misconduct on the job, but tend not to report it, with overall results showing little improvement since pre-Enron days. In the past year, more than half of the employees surveyed said they had personally witnessed violations of company ethics codes, policies, or the law. More than two in five of the employees who witnessed such behavior did not report it.
• A significant number of U.S. teens say that dishonest and sometimes even violent behavior is necessary for success, according to the fifth annual Junior Achievement/Deloitte Teen Ethics Survey. While 71 percent of the teens polled say they feel fully prepared to make ethical decisions when they enter the workplace, 28 percent of that group say they believe it is sometimes necessary to cheat or plagiarize in order to succeed. Twenty-four percent said cheating on a test is sometimes acceptable, usually citing their personal desire to succeed as the rationale. Twenty-three percent of surveyed teens said that violence against another person is sometimes acceptable. Justifications included settling an argument (27 percent) and revenge (20 percent). The survey was conducted in September among 725 13-to-18-year-olds.
• Ethics and honesty rate as “very important” or “extremely important” qualities in a presidential candidate, according to a recent survey by the Associated Press and Yahoo News. Those traits, in fact, led the list of important qualities cited by those polled. But neither major party’s frontrunner, the Democrats’ Hillary Clinton or the Republicans’ Rudolph Giuliani, scored particularly high in those categories. Thirty-eight percent of respondents viewed Clinton as honest, and 40 percent as ethical; 42 percent described Giuliani as honest, and 40 percent characterized him as ethical.

Editor’s Note: Deloitte is a corporate sponsor of Ethics Newsline®.

Sources: Deloitte.com, Dec. 5 — AP, Dec. 5.

About half have witnessed malfeasance but not turned in the perpetrators; their results stand in contrast to the fact that almost all doctors concede they ’should’ blow the whistle.

BOSTON
More than half of the doctors who responded to a recent survey on professional ethics said they do not report impaired or incompetent colleagues or blow the whistle on serious medical errors.

The results, published last week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, also show that virtually all doctors believe they should report such misbehavior, even though many of them fail to follow through, according to a summary of the study in the Boston Globe.

CBS News reports that the reason for the disconnect is unclear, but apparently is related to fear of retaliation or lawsuits.

The study surveyed 3,504 practicing physicians between November 2003 and June 2004, and received responses from 1,662.

Ninety-six percent of responding physicians agreed that doctors should always report impaired or incompetent colleagues, but only 55 percent of those with direct personal knowledge of impairment or incompetence actually reported it. Ninety-three percent said they should alert authorities to serious medical error, but only 54 percent who had witnessed such error actually followed through, according to a breakdown of the results in U.S. News & World Report.

David Blumenthal, senior author of the study, told USA Today that it’s clear that “human beings always fall short of their aspirations,” but noted that it was encouraging that they at least acknowledged “what they ought to be doing.”

Sources: USA Today, Dec. 4 — Boston Globe, Dec. 4 — Washington Post, Dec. 4 — CBS News, Dec. 4 — U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 3 — USA Today, Dec. 3 — Reuters, Dec. 3.

But the book, created in reaction to cases of abuse by Catholic officials, does not specifically caution against priests.

NEW YORK
The Catholic archdiocese of New York last week began distributing a coloring book to warn children about sexual predators.

According to a report from the Reuters news agency, the book has angered some critics who say it does not specifically caution children to be wary of priests.

One page in the coloring book, reports the New York Post, depicts a guardian angel warning an altar boy never to remain alone in a room with an adult unless the door is open.

The angel says, “If a child and an adult happen to be alone, someone should know where they are, and the door should be open or have a big window in it.”

But the man in the drawing does not wear a collar and is not explicitly characterized as a priest, an omission that prompted David Clohessy, the director of a Chicago-based organization for people abused by priests, to tell ABC News that the church should “err on the side of clarity.”

“We just have to bite the bullet and say to kids, even a grown-up who you like and your parents respect, and even a grown-up in a position of real authority, with a fancy title and a big job, can hurt you,” Clohessy said.

Church officials told the cable news television station New York 1 that it would be unfair to directly target priests.

The coloring book, titled “Being Friends, Being Safe, Being Catholic,” has been distributed to 300 schools and 400 religious groups in the city, reports New York television station WABC. It was created as part of an abuse-prevention curriculum mandated by Catholic church leaders in 2002 following widespread public outrage over cases of abuse and cover-ups of that abuse in several U.S. cities.

Sources: ABC News, Dec. 5 — NY1, Dec. 5 — Reuters, Dec. 5 — New York Post, Dec. 5 — WABC-TV, New York, Dec. 3.

Analysts ponder whether graft is so deeply rooted in economy and culture that it’s inextricable

SEOUL
South Korea last week reeled from continuing allegations of corruption at one of its most prestigious firms, Samsung.

The International Herald Tribune reports that Samsung executives have been banned from leaving the country and prosecutors have ransacked corporate offices in search of an alleged slush fund supposedly topping $200 million.

In the Herald Tribune report, writer Choe Sang-Hun notes: “South Koreans have grown tired of the corrupt ways of their big businesses. But because the economy is so heavily dependent on a handful of conglomerates, and their influence so pervasive in the daily life of South Koreans, people fear that striking these behemoths too harshly might well hurt their own economic well-being.”

The latest events overtaking Samsung fit into what Christian Science Monitor correspondent Donald Kirk calls “a pattern of corruption that also periodically ensnares the country’s business empires.”

“In such an atmosphere,” Kirk notes, “the proliferation of scandals raises the question of whether this fast-growing society is hopelessly mired in corruption or going through a phase it may eventually outgrow.”

While calling on Samsung to “rectify its practices,” Finance and Economy minister Kwon O-kyu maintained that South Korea has made significant steps in ethics and transparency since the economy’s meltdown 10 years ago, an event that precipitated a bailout from the International Monetary Fund, notes the Korea Times.

Late last week Samsung announced that it might delay billions of dollars in domestic and overseas investments until the probe is completed, according to the Agence France-Presse.

Prosecutors are looking into allegations that Samsung bribed government officials and journalists. Samsung has denied those charges.

Sources: Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 6 — AFP, Dec. 6 — International Herald Tribune, Dec. 3 — Korea Times, Dec. 3.

Debate over interrogation of terror suspects intensifies in wake of revelation that CIA destroyed videotapes; mortgage industry and government agree to rescue plan for some homeowners who got in over their heads; and the U.S. Supreme Court upholds ruling in decade-old ethics case involving illegal taping of congressmen.

WASHINGTON
Recurring ethics issues, including one dating from more than a decade ago, were back in the news last week. Among the stories:

Interrogation methods used on terror suspects again became the focus of ethics debate as members of Congress began asking questions about the destruction of videotapes reportedly showing questioning of two al Qaeda operatives. The New York Times reports that the Justice Department and the Central Intelligence Agency’s internal watchdog have begun a joint preliminary inquiry into the destruction, which was not publicly disclosed until last week. The Washington Post reports that the CIA made videotapes in 2002 of interrogators administering harsh techniques, but destroyed the recordings three years later. A source close to the incident told the New York Times that the destruction was engineered to prevent CIA operatives from being put in legal jeopardy. Questions are being raised about whether destroying the tapes, which included footage of hundreds of hours of interrogation, was illegal or done to thwart oversight and questions, including those of the 9/11 commission.

The mortgage industry and the Bush administration agreed to a plan to help some struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure amidst the subprime mortgage crisis. MarketWatch reports that some borrowers facing spiraling mortgage rates will be able to refinance an existing loan or be moved into a loan from the Federal Housing Administration. While President Bush denied that the move was a bailout, critics continue to maintain that the program goes too far, raising the volume on what Forbes calls “the inevitable moral hazard question” — whether coming to the aid of defaulting borrowers encourages reckless lending and borrowing. Also, as the Baltimore Sun notes, the deal comes with many limitations, leading some housing advocates to charge that it does not go far enough.

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wa.) faces fines and penalties of more than $800,000 for leaking a phone call he illegally taped more than 10 years ago. The U.S. Supreme Court last week refused to intervene in a lower court’s ruling that McDermott acted improperly when he gave reporters access to the tape, in which Republican leaders discussed ethics charges against former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports. House minority leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) filed the original civil suit against McDermott.

Sources: New York Times, Dec. 9 — New York Times, Dec. 7 — Washington Post. Dec. 7 — Baltimore Sun, Dec. 7 — MarketWatch, Dec. 6 — Forbes, Dec. 6 — Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Dec. 4.

“The commission did formally request material of this kind from all relevant agencies, and the commission was assured that we had received all the material responsive to our request. No tapes were acknowledged or turned over, nor was the commission provided with any transcript prepared from recordings.”

– Philip Zelikow, who served as executive director of the Sept. 11 commission and later as a senior counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, talking to the New York Times about the recent revelation that the CIA destroyed hundred of hours of taped interrogations in contravention of the advice of White House and Justice Department lawyers. Both the Justice Department and the CIA’s inspector general have launched a preliminary inquiry into the tapes’ destruction, which took place in 2005, but was only publicly revealed last week after pressure from the Times.

We had several responses to Rushworth Kidder’s column last week about the teen’s suicide apparently linked to postings on a social networking site. This letter expresses the main theme voiced by many who took time to write:

One definition of technology is “the place where people meet things.” Technology isn’t stuff, it’s what we do with it. In that regard, we can apply the very same rules we affect in “real life.” Something happening “online” doesn’t allow one to abdicate one’s humanity. There are no special “techno” rules because “techno,” dear user, is us.

So I have to believe this horrible example of a cruelly driven suicide has nothing to do with technology, beyond the extent that the tool allows us to extend our cruel natures beyond face to face. This is no different than making war by dropping bombs from 50,000 feet. It’s not new.

I worry that we will try to apply protective measures to something that is, in its essence, a matter of human nature. Meanwhile, the civil courts could easily handle this as a wrongful death suit, and that’s likely what will happen. How sad that it will come down to measuring culpability with money. But sometimes, that’s what works.

– Rob Oakley
Rockland, Maine

by Rushworth M. Kidder

Here are two bits of recent news. Anybody see a trend here?

• A recent national survey found that when asked to rate the importance of various traits in presidential candidates, both Democrats and Republicans ranked honesty and ethics ahead of all others attributes. But only 40 percent of voters in this Associated Press/Yahoo News survey saw either of the current frontrunners — the Democrats’ Hillary Clinton or the Republicans’ Rudy Giuliani — as ethical. As for honesty, Giuliani fared only slightly better (42 percent) than Clinton (38 percent). Yet Gallup’s national polls continue to show Clinton and Giuliani as the leading contenders.
• A just-released survey of teens found that 71 percent say they “feel fully prepared to make ethical decisions when they enter the workforce.” But of that group, nearly 40 percent feel it is “sometimes necessary to cheat, plagiarize, lie or even behave violently” if they wish to succeed. The survey, by Junior Achievement and Deloitte, also found that among those who say cheating on a test is okay (24 percent), more than half (54 percent) give as a rationale “their personal desire to succeed.”

Let me translate. Many voters feel strongly about ethics and believe that neither leading candidate is ethical, but think that’s okay because we’ve got to have a president. Many teens feel confident in applying their ethical standards in the workplace and believe that cheating falls within these standards, but think that’s okay because they’ve got to succeed.

What’s the trend we’re seeing? It’s a disheartening slide into ethical anomie — a kind of moral purposelessness that justifies a lack of integrity on the basis of a need to survive.

Of the two, I’m less worried about the political trend. Voters may well be saying, “This is simply the way it is, and I can’t do anything about it.” That’s a bit oversimplified, because if we really felt that ethics was the deal breaker, we’d quickly find other candidates. Instead, we seem to be admitting that while ethics is nice in the abstract, we still need a president — any president — to run the place regardless of his or her values. This amounts to a fatalistic admission that, at least for this election cycle, we’ll have to do without ethics. But at least there’s an implicit recognition here that ethics matters.

The truly alarming news, by contrast, is from the education front. And here the scariest actors are not the teens themselves, but we adults who have engendered the kind of contradictions expressed by these teens. Let me explain.

The opening question in the Junior Achievement/Deloitte poll — and I should note that Deloitte is a corporate sponsor of Ethics Newsline® — asks whether teens feel confident making ethical decisions. The answers came, according to the editors at Junior Achievement, in response to a single question rather than a battery of questions. Asking whether you feel confident making ethical decisions is a bit like asking, “Are you ethical?” What teen would say no? Only those who are so cocksure that ethics is irrelevant, obsolete, or for sissies that they arrogantly dismiss it, or those who are so sophisticated that they recognize how little they know and how much they have to learn. Most teens, I suspect, don’t fall into either of those extremes. So they read that question as asking, “Given that ethics is a mark of adulthood and that knowing right from wrong is nothing but a personal, subjective matter, would you say you’re ready for adulthood?” The easy answer is, “Sure!” The point: Don’t read too much into this single answer.

But what about the high numbers within this group who think cheating, plagiarizing, lying, and punching people out is okay? Don’t make too much of them, either. Given the infrequency of serious character education programs in our schools — programs that focus on moral reasoning rather than on simply obeying the rules — these teens will not, on average, have had much formal guidance from adults about applying honesty, responsibility, and fairness to their tough decisions. These words will have popped up here and there, of course, but without much attention to the arguments in their favor. Also popping up: plenty of adult examples in which dishonesty, irresponsibility, or unfairness have gone unpunished. How, in this context, could we expect teens to arrive at a sterling moral standard? The point: These findings aren’t new, so don’t read too much into them either.

No, the real alarm here comes when these two answers — “I’m confident in my ethics” and “I lie, cheat, and steal” — are put together. The frightening fact is that we adults have delivered to the next generation a deliberately delusional mentality. We’ve not only led significant numbers of teens to think that in school as in presidential politics, success requires unethical behavior. We’ve also been so slipshod in our educational practices that they think they can make ethical decisions while behaving unethically.

And that, it seems, may be the most damning testimonial against my generation. We’re the ones, after all, who are running the moral systems of our times. Not to act ethically is bad enough. Not to know you’re acting unethically is even worse. But to be confident you’re acting ethically when you’re not is worst of all. To so arrange our educational systems that this corruption goes unnoticed and unaddressed — until brought to light by a survey of this sort — is not only immoral, it is creating the very kind of electorate that seems to have no recourse against unethical candidates. We owe our children — and our democracy — a clearer sense of ethics than that.

©2007 Institute for Global Ethics