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Integrity, ethics, honesty, values – or the lack of them –
are being bounced around the business community these days
like a beach ball at a concert. But is there such a
thing as being too honest and ethical and if so, how do you
draw the line?
The Vice-president of
Sales for a rapidly growing distribution company recently left
his position to become Vice-president of Sales and CEO heir
apparent for a competitor. With his departure, he
took the knowledge of the recently completed strategic
plan. The plan
included the blueprint to double the size of his former
company within five years and expand geographically into the
primary market base of his new employer.
But while planning the
market strategies for his new employer, it becomes readily
apparent that his new employer is overlooking the possibility
of a new aggressive competitor into their market place. He is bound by a
confidentiality agreement with his former employer.
He realizes that
withholding what he knows will likely ambush his new
company. By his
sharing what he knows, he will violate the confidentiality
agreement. If he
shares information about his former employer, is he being
dishonest? If he
doesn’t share the information in order to honor his
commitment, is he upholding his integrity but being disloyal
to his current employer?
If he is disloyal, isn’t he shortchanging his new
employer?
I recently asked that
question to several clients during planning meetings and this
past weekend to a group of management consultants. More
specifically I asked if honesty and integrity was a core
competency for their organizations and if so can you have too
much.
Surprisingly – or maybe not – 9 out of 10 organizations
chose not to include integrity or ethics as one of their core
competencies, and 3 of these organizations are faith-based and
family owned.
How can this be? One curt answer is
that business is business. Every manager talks
about wanting employees that are honest and that they can
trust. But
sometimes trust means not telling others the truth. “You want the truth?
You can’t handle the truth” shouts Jack Nicholson in A Few
Good Men. But
who makes the decision who can and can’t handle the
truth?
When you go home and your
spouse asks you “what happened today honey”, what should you
say? Can you
disclose to her that your business is reorganizing and layoffs
are forthcoming, that you are engaged in a not yet public
acquisition, or that a manager ignored a federal safety
regulation and the company is hoping no one hears about
it? Keeping
company information in confidence means just that, right?
Oh come on, you tell your
wife everything.
Well, almost everything. It won’t hurt
her to know that you weren’t really working late on
Wednesdays. It’s
just that you can’t get in eighteen holes if you’re supposed
to be home by 6.
But what will it hurt if you talk to her about work.
Who is she going to tell? You need somebody to
talk this over with.
OOPS! She finds out about
your Wednesday afternoon meeting with your golfing buddies and
that is the last straw. She packs up and leaves – and gets a
job at your competitors.
And - well
you get the drift. Would you be liable for the
breach? Did you violate a trust?
Most people would agree
that keeping two sets of books is dishonest or falsifying a
safety report is wrong.
But what about cheating on your taxes? Doesn’t everyone do
that? If everyone
does it, does that make it less of a lie? Does it demonstrate a
lack of integrity
and ethics? Possibly.
But isn’t this being loyal to the company in order to
improve profitability? Most would agree to yes.
As our vice-president
experienced, being honest to one party may be considered
lacking integrity by another? If honesty is telling
the truth and acting beyond reproach at all costs, then does
that mean at times you may need to be dishonest in order to do
what’s ethically and morally right and demonstrate
loyalty? Can you
be honest and disloyal or dishonest and loyal?
Can an individual who breaks a confidence for the
benefit of another party be trusted in the future?
Being honest is so confusing!
Before throwing
competencies and values like honesty, integrity, ethics and
values around in your company, make sure you understand that
honesty may be black and white but integrity, ethics and
values may lie (no pun intended) in the eye of the
beholder.
With a mobile workforce
and a greater and greater dependence on intellectual property
and knowledge, determining how much honesty and integrity you
need, defining what is acceptable and unacceptable codes of
behavior, and knowing how you can evaluate and identify other
individuals who share the proper balance between “just saying
it like it is” and “some things are just best left unsaid”
will be critically important.
CriteriaOne is helping organizations
set the standard for human performance and linking
individual competencies from the drive for results
and integrity to business objectives.
For more information about CriteriaOne,
click here.
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