Ethics Resource Center

Published: September 3, 2009

Bring Your Code of Conduct to Life

By: Andrew Mitton (www.andrewmitton.com)

Most codes of conduct and ethics are struck by the curse of knowledge.  What’s “the curse of knowledge?” you say. 

To answer your question let me describe the simple game of tappers and listeners.  I learned about this game in the book: Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.  Elizabeth Newton created the game at Stanford in 1990 to earn her Ph.D.

Here’s how the game works – one person is assigned to be the “tapper” and the other the “listener.”  The tapper is given 120 common songs like “Happy Birthday” or the “Star Spangled Banner” and asked to tap out each song’s rhythm on a table with their knuckle.  The “listener” must then guess the song. Sounds easy enough. 

But not so.  The listener only guessed 2.5% of the songs.  Why?  Because the tapper has the benefit of hearing the song in her head.  The listener just hears a series of taps.
The same is true with the language of any profession.  Running through the head of a lawyer is the music learned from law school and years of experience when they’re talking about indemnities, estoppel, and the like.  The non-lawyer listener only hears a series of taps.  And so it goes with codes of conduct.   Antitrust, conflicts of interest, and insider trading – these are all terms smitten with the curse of knowledge.  The reader doesn’t have the benefit of the years of training and exposure to these concepts that the drafter has had.  

What’s one to do about this? 

Talk in language that everyone understands.  You don’t dumb things down.  You just explain things in terms based on items in the real world – such as a boat.

That’s what we did at Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation to great success.  Our Code of Business Ethics and Conduct is based on the story of hunters and their umiaqs – skin covered boats.  It goes like this:

As spring nears, the bowheads prepare for their journey north and east. They travel from what is now called the Bering Sea, through the Bering Straits, into the Chukchi Sea, and finally arrive at the Beaufort Sea.

Along the way, the bowheads meet hunters waiting with their Umiaqs — skin-covered boats. Some of the boats appear light and clean, pleasing to the eye.

If a bowhead wishes to give itself to a whaling crew, it must surface by a clean Umiaq. These belong to respectful people; people who are considerate of others, who share their catch with widows, orphans, the old, and all those who could not hunt for themselves. They are honest. They treat other people, and all animals with respect.

These are the hunters to whom whales want to give themselves.

No legalese here.  Just an inspiring story that everyone can understand.  We successfully avoided the curse of knowledge.  And so can you. 

Every company has a story.  Just go back to the founders, or to a critical juncture in the company’s history, or to a defining moment.  There you will find the seed or vein of who your company is.  Then base your code around this.  You’ll find that you can have a living breathing document that will shape the ethical culture of your company rather than a document that sits on a shelf and collects dust.

You may find a copy of Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation’s code of business ethics and conduct at http://www.bowheadsupport.com/ANC_Umiaq.cfm.

Andrew Mitton is the former director of compliance for Ukpeagvik Inupiat Corporation (http://www.ukpik.com).  He is now designer of compliance and ethics programs at Vellum llc (www.vellumllc.com).

In This Issue

• Financial Crisis: Living With the Legacy
  Column By Patricia J. Harned, Ph.D. President, ERC
• Bring Your Code of Conduct to Life
  
• The Ethics Recession Reflections on the Moral Underpinnings of the Current Economic Crisis: Book Review By Frank J. Navran
  
• Ethics During Difficult Financial Times: A Conversation with Steve Miranda, Chief Human Resource, Strategic Planning and Diversity Officer, Society for Human Resource Management