NEWS > 05 December 2005

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Springfield News Sun (subs) -
05 December 2005

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Ethics: A struggle for all of

By BILL HENDRICK

ATLANTA � The tab at a nice restaurant shows a glaring $40 error in your favor. A friend says to keep quiet. Would you tell the waiter?

Or suppose you peek into your daughter's bedroom and see she's obtained a new purse on a "five-finger discount." Should you make her return it? Or how 'bout that itty-bitty bounce your racquetball partner didn't see before you slammed the rubber spheroid to the back wall � giving you the point and the game? And, while we're at it, what about that last expense account? Come on now � did you really pay the cabbie $35 for that airport ride or was it closer to $15?

If you're an ethical person, you know the right answers. (To check your own standards, take the short quiz on this page. Four more are online at ajc.com.)

But polls and experts say it's becoming harder and harder for most of us to do what we know we should and easier and easier to rationalize unethical decisions. The crescendo of ethics problems is leading to an alarming rise in cynicism, youthful cheating and plummeting trust in public officials, the media, the companies we work for, even our friends.

"We are hearing about more and don't seem to be making headway against lapses in ethics," says Dan Wueste, director of the Robert J. Rutland Center for Ethics at Clemson University. "I think, for instance, that the announcement by President Bush that his staff was going to get ethics training was met with sort of a snicker."

But ethics problems in politics, he adds, are hardly surprising or new. Wueste says it's hard to see how the White House staff's one-hour ethical "refresher" course � mandated by President Bush last month � could alter behavior. And this is especially true, he says, in light of other highly-visible ethical problems making headlines with drum-beat regularity.

Just last Monday Joseph Garrison pleaded guilty in federal court in Atlanta to defrauding the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Georgia and Alabama out of $92,137. The nonprofit organization that helps fulfill the wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses.

A day later, former state Sen. Charles Walker of Augusta was sentenced to 10 years and one month in prison after being convicted on federal fraud charges.

Through Enron, WorldCom, Abu Ghraib and the woes of a couple of the president's allies who've been accused of shady dealing and the problem becomes very concrete. And then there's the big stink over whether famous reporters Judith Miller and Bob Woodward of The Washington Post got too cozy with their sources.

The media, Wueste says, doesn't need more hits to its credibility at a time when the public equates journalists just above used car salesmen and a tad over mechanics.

"There's reason to be concerned," Wueste says, "and to undertake genuine efforts to help people understand how important ethics is."

And it's harder for parents to teach proper ethics to their kids because in today's hectic, stressed world, says Shannon O'Roarke, a philosophy professor at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, there's little time to read "Goodnight Moon," much less to talk about right and wrong.

"It's important to realize that people become ethical over time," she says. "So we're seeing people willing to climb the ladder by nodding at ethical lapses. We're facing an uphill road."

Additional research shows the country has a long way to go:

� The National Business Ethics Survey found in October that more than half of American workers say they've observed at least one type of ethical misconduct in the workplace recently, a jump from 2003 despite an increase in formal ethics training programs.

� Opinion polls place business people in lower esteem than politicians.

� Among graduates of top business schools, 70 percent felt ethics had deteriorated over the years, according to a recent study in the Journal of Education for Business. While 80 percent said they were capable of recognizing unethical behavior, only 35 percent thought business ethics would ever improve.

� In a recent Deloitte poll of teens, 42 percent admitted they'd be likely to act unethically if told to by their bosses. More than a third said they'd lie to the boss to cover up a mistake in the poll by Deloitte & Touche USA, one of the Big Four professional services firms.

� 40 percent of men had witnessed an increase in unethical conduct by co-workers in an October survey by the Hudson Highland Group.

� The Josephson Institute of Ethics found that 62 percent of high school students had cheated on exams, 27 percent had stolen from a store and 40 percent had lied to save money.

� 60 percent of Americans regard the Bush White House as ethically challenged, says a November AP-Ipsos poll.

Most humans also are � at one time or another, says William Bost, a partner in the Ragsdale Ligglett law firm in Raleigh, N.C., who adds that ethical people "do the right thing without regard to its effect on" them. Those who show favoritism or discrimination are unethical, he says, as are those who fail to treat others with respect.

Ethics is linked to our impulses of greed and violence, according to Lisa Newton, director of applied ethics at Fairfield University, and that greed and violence are showing themselves more now.

"It's always been to the advantage of the most successful to get rid of the rules, to control the rules," she says.

Facing ethical problems daily "is just part of the human condition," says Richard Wokutch of Virginia Tech.

"Granted there are people who are often cynical about ethics training and that people will even joke about it," he says. "[People] will always find new ways to interpret ethics in ways that suit them and promote their own interests at others' expense."

Still, he's encouraged the issue is finally getting press attention.

"When people think that they are being affected directly," he says, "you certainly get their attention."

Bill Hendrick writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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Article sourced from

Springfield News Sun (subs) -05 December 2005

Ethics: A struggle for all of

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Springfield News Sun (subs) -
05 December 2005