Teaching Right and Wrong

When it comes to instilling ethics in the corporate environment, learning professionals have few easy options. But eliminating decision-making bias, promoting a transparent culture and circulating lessons learned can clarify the gray areas and help position the organization for success.

Teaching right and wrong is not a black-or-white, yes-or-no construct. Answers to global business problems are often complicated and culturally charged, constrained by religion, setting, laws and values. Today’s leaders must be aware of any bias they may bring to a given situation, and it’s the chief learning officer’s job to provide context and help illuminate a straight path to a workable solution.

“Teaching right and wrong is really helping managers, executives and employees understand decision-making biases, how they get caught in traps,” said Mason A. Carpenter, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business. “Often we look at the outcome — this is right or this is wrong — and we miss the path a manager is walking down. They thought they were doing the right thing, but they got caught up in a process that led them to a wrong outcome.”

The Partnership Between Culture and Ethics

Most employees don’t intend to cross the line; they simply may not recognize the signs that indicate they’ve moved from black and white to gray. This is why it’s important to promote cultural transparency and open communication.

Carpenter said culture is the fabric of learning, providing new inputs that can prod someone to behave in a way that will increase the likelihood that a firm will not only survive but perform. Further, systems that are in place, such as those involving compensation or performance management, are also part of a company’s culture and should reinforce the company’s values.

“If you’re in medical testing, and your managers and their staff are paid based on getting a drug or a protocol or something approved, as opposed to getting a drug or treatment that is safe through the process, that type of incentive is going to push people to make choices they might not make under another incentive scheme,” Carpenter said. “The challenge is how do you create incentives that match up with the outcomes you need? For for-profit companies, that’s profitability without jeopardizing credibility, but in some companies the outcome is most important, how I get there is not so important, and that creates all sorts of problems.”