Guest Column: Lou Bright
Get Me Aristotle
Let us pause for a moment to pity the beleaguered ethics officers eternally caught between the rock of our noblest aspirations and the hard place of a grim and relentless world. Actually, we don’t call them “ethics officers” anymore. We call them “Ethics and Compliance Officers.” As an erstwhile Ethics and Compliance Officer, I spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out what it means to be one; or at least to be one without personal embarrassment, never mind a modicum of success. I never have to think too long before I hear a certain cognitive dissonance buzzing in the key of that disjunctive job title and echoing through the canyon between what we claim for ourselves and how we mostly conduct our lives.
Now I am a bureaucrat – or a “public servant” as we style ourselves when we have our good clothes on – and however reviled we might be, I have always figured that we aim at higher stars than our friends in the private world. After all they are engaged in nothing more romantic or interesting than the quotidian pursuit of money. We, on the other hand, are dedicated to insuring that government of the People, by the People, and for the People is at least not a downright laughable proposition. But as I try to compass the boundaries of the Ethics and Compliance field, I have begun to notice that I might have been wrong about that.
I have been struck by the degree of similarity between public and private organizations when it comes to things like articulated ethical standards, codes of conduct, training programs and public pronouncements about our “culture.” In fact, I have been down right impressed with the level of commitment to civic virtue that is apparently to be found in the corporate world.
Only the churlish suggest that this renewed commitment to value in the workplace is because, as is routine in government, in recent years corporate America has had certain articles of dirty ethics laundry luridly spread across the front page, or that our Captains of Industry have been reminded of the suggestions on corporate governance offered by sources like Sarbanes-Oxley and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Much better to focus on the uplifting idea that the public and private sectors stand together, arm in arm, four square in favor of the fine and noble things like truth, honesty and fair dealing, and social responsibility.
We’re serious about it too. We have increasingly complex and sophisticated training programs, auditing practices, metrics for figuring out the incidence rate of unsavory behavior and the quality of our ethical culture. We speak of our ethical aspirations and standards frequently; even in public where others can hear. We describe ourselves in the colors of social and moral philosophy rather than in those of the counting house. Most of all, we hold ourselves to be responsible and accountable. Of course, the most responsible and accountable person of all is the Ethics and Compliance Officer who, most of the time, is trying not to remember how often words like “accountable” turn out to be synonyms for words like “scapegoat.”
When we or our bosses stand in the light and describe ourselves in these terms it all seems so uplifting and worthwhile. And it is. But down at the level of toadstools and tomato plants where most of us actually work, things are often a little darker. Down here, there is business to be done. Programs and projects must be designed, approved, staffed, implemented and managed. Budgets must be crafted and lived by. Markets must be developed and personnel must be hired, trained, managed, promoted or fired.
Our world, and the world of our colleagues, is relentlessly result-oriented and the pace of our lives is decide and move on; decide and move on. We have offices and resources and staff. We are telephonically, cybernetically and synergistically connected and we are global in our reach. We have everything but time to close the door, turn off the machines, stare out the window and ask ourselves, “now what . . . would . . . Aristotle do?”
It is not surprising that we are molded by this tectonic grind so that our notions of the right and the good are bent in service to the ends given by our organizational imperatives and the means sufficient to those ends. The moral question becomes: is it acceptable? There is great import in this question because it means that if our proposed course does not violate some law or rule – if it is acceptable - then it is ethical, or at least ethically neutral.
Of course, this is compliance ethics and it is easy to sneer at it and cry the beauty of our nobler sentiments, as many of us frequently and happily do. And yet there is much to commend this way of moralizing. For one thing, the compliance edifice stands on the notion that the most reliable human motive is naked and narrow self interest. We certainly have the word of Thomas Hobbes, James Madison and, perhaps, our own lifelong habits as testament to the truth of that. So, it is wisdom to construct an ethic of rules so as to have a measurable and reliable way to curb the ravages of rapacious and unregulated self interest.
Also, we cannot fail to notice that the compliance approach to the good life is just as handy as a pocket on a shirt. If what we want isn’t positively prohibited then we are free to do it. This gives the widest possible scope to the means and ends available to us so we are relieved of the irritating necessity of placing “ethical” blocks in the path of our organizations or ourselves so frequently.
Most importantly of all, living the ethical life in the compliance world is easy. We only need to take two simple steps. Know the rules. Obey the rules. Actually, we can even fudge on the last one a little bit if we just make sure no one realizes we’ve bruised a rule here or there. After all, we always have those masters of compliance ethics Nicolo Machiavelli and Richard Nixon to remind us that we need not actually bother to be good so long as everyone thinks we’re good.
Aye, there’s the rub. We are just too experienced at seeing how contemptible, albeit successful, one can be without breaking the rules. When we hear Stephen Carter say, “America’s habit, and frequently America’s nightmare, is to trade ethics for law” we nod our heads in rueful recognition. We are all too familiar with the routine and casual interplay between money and power. We see how often the connection between merit and reward is accidental. We know that – one way or another – whistleblowers never prosper.
Each time we see such things it is like a drop of acid on our soul. It is a robbery of what we hold in common: a world we share because it is worth sharing; that world that sometimes seems to exist only in our ethics policies and speeches.
There is no denying the yearning in our hearts for such a world, or that it is our constant potential. As Mr. Lincoln said, self interest is a common motive, but it is not the sum of humanity. It begins to dawn on me that coherence in the role of Ethics and Compliance Officer requires three commitments.
First, if we are to approach our ethical aspirations, we, and our colleagues, ought to be possessed with the habit, as opposed to the mere promise, of civic virtue. I take this to be an emotional and intellectual disposition to search for, and act on, opportunities to instantiate our shared virtues in our daily acts, purposes and processes. I mean the virtues that make community and common enterprise worthwhile: virtues like integrity, civility, courage, practical wisdom, subordination of private interest for a common good.
Second, we are professionally committed to the proposition that “ought” implies “can.” Despite some bitter experience, despite the counsel of the cynical, it is simply true that we and our colleagues are capable, even eager for, lives of common virtue.
Finally, it seems clear that the difficult path to “can” lies, not through individual contemplation of the mysteries of morality, but through discourse with our peers. I mean the kind of discourse where we meet as equals on the plane of ideas, as free of partisanship and predisposition as we can make ourselves. It is here that the moral question can be transformed from what is acceptable to what is best and so we begin to become the people and organizations we hope and intend to be.
Here, in aiming at inculcating the habit of such value infused discourse, lies the central purpose of our role and at least a faint path between Scylla and Charybdis, if not an end to beleaguerment.
Lou Bright is general counsel of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission. This article is based on his remarks at "Ethics in Government: The Journey from Ideas to Action" on Feb. 4, 2008 at the LBJ School of Public Affairs in Austin.