Ethics Newsline®

by Rushworth M. Kidder

Over the weekend, in the run-up to this week’s Super Tuesday primaries, I fell into conversation with a local contractor doing some work around our house. Having known him for years, I have no doubt about his integrity, honesty, and responsibility. Yet when the discussion turned to national security, he articulated a chilling point with a shrug of inevitability.

“We may have to sacrifice some ethics,” he said, “to deal with terrorists.”

In his own life, I can’t imagine him deliberately choosing to “sacrifice some ethics” in order to “deal with” a problem. Ideally, he doesn’t want his government to do so, either. But his trust is fading. So frustrated has he become that he’s willing to accept for his country what he would find repugnant for himself.

Nor is he alone. I suspect there are millions like him, longing to have a government that does the right thing, yet wondering whether doing right is feasible in today’s world.

In recent months, the presidential candidates have been battered with questions about war, terrorism, and security. At bottom, however, these aren’t the questions that concern my friend. He’s looking for broader indicators of style and values — the way a candidate will manage the affairs of state and the moral standards that shape his or her character. What he longs to know is really quite simple: Which of you, if elected, will do the right thing regularly and still keep us safe and prosperous?

But what does “doing the right thing” mean for a candidate? Fortunately, a survey issued last week on ethics in government sheds valuable light on the nature of moral character. Based on data gathered last summer by the Washington-based Ethics Resource Center (ERC), the next president will face a federal government system that is significantly challenged:

• About half of federal employees surveyed observed misconduct at their place of work in the past year.
• Of those who observed misconduct, one in four didn’t report it — and those who did often reported only to their immediate superiors rather than to senior management.
• About 20 percent of federal employees work in “environments conducive to misconduct,” where they are “introduced to situations inviting wrongdoing and/or feel pressured to cut corners to do their jobs.”
• Many who reported misconduct were subject to retaliation, and many who failed to report attributed their silence to a fear of retaliation.

The ERC report traces a decline of ethics standards in recent years, and it warns of higher ethics risks in the future, but it also sketches out remedies. These include elevating ethics on the public agenda, focusing on the tone at the top, and moving beyond mere compliance to the creation of ethical cultures.

Why does all of this matter? Because, as the report argues, “the most important asset of government is public trust,” and because “misconduct that is most prevalent and least reported poses the greatest risk to public trust.”

Seen through this lens, presidential character becomes a vital issue. For government to be effective, it must be ethical. The most important influence on government is its senior leadership. If the president is not deliberately focused on elevating the ethics of government — both talking the talk and walking the walk — the risks to public trust are significant.

What, then, should we be looking for in a candidate? Three things:

• Avoiding misconduct. We want a president who recognizes and eschews moral misconduct — and has no history of it. Misconduct includes (in the ERC’s language) such things as abusive behavior, lying to employees, conflict of interest, misusing confidential information, altering documents, changing financial records, bribery, stealing, and using competitors’ inside information. Do any of the presidential candidates have a complex relationship with any of these things?
• Taking responsibility. Some 21 percent of government employees think top leaders aren’t held accountable for their own ethics violations — the double-standards problem. One quarter think top leaders tolerate retaliation against those who report misconduct, and 30 percent don’t believe top leadership keeps its promises. Which candidates have visible records of accountability, non-retaliation, and promise keeping?
• Promoting ethical cultures. According to the ERC, ethical cultures are those in which top management can be trusted, managers at all levels encourage ethical behavior, there is strong peer support among employees for ethical action (and peer revulsion to its opposite), and the values that are visible through informal channels are the same as the ones formally articulated. Which candidate is most willing to invest energy in promoting an ethical culture throughout government?

Do we have to sacrifice ethics to deal with tough issues? No. As we go to the polls, we’re looking for a president who knows that, feels it, and can inspire an entire nation to believe it.

©2008 Institute for Global Ethics

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