Sandcastle Ethics

I have heard it said, “What happens in private does not hurt anyone.” The motto for Las Vegas resonates this private versus public philosophy, “What happens in Las Vegas stays in Vegas.” Or does it? Does it get carried out by other means? Is anything truly secret? The implication of the two sayings above suggests that any indiscreet behavior that transpires in the privacy of a hotel room will not become publicly known and bring irreversible harm or affect that individual or the community. Accordingly, it suggests that a person can be assured that there will be no public exposure of private indiscretions. Pose this suggestion to Senator Craig or Governor Spitzer.

Do private ethics have no bearing on public life or social ethics? Does what occurs in the privacy of a public official’s home or office have no influence on public, corporate, or social policy decisions? Can private ethical behavior be separated from social ethics without consequences? Can there be public or social ethics without underlying personal ethics? Is there a legitimate bifurcation between private and public ethics? These questions go to the heart of law, the extent of morality, relationships development, the inner life and its outward expression, and public and social policy development.

Private Lives, Public Ethics

David Gill of the University of Southern California cuts to the heart of the matter concerning private and public ethics with a brilliant assessment of the relationship between social and personal ethics,

“It is impossible to maintain a clear and precise distinction between social ethics and personal (individual) ethics. No individual behavior is without social implications. No social situation or problem is without individual repercussions.” [1]

According to Gill, public policy and social ethics are intertwined. All of the social institutions he identifies encompass a vast range of issues in every segment of society and cannot exist apart from individuals. Business, education, religion, professional associations, and government all involve people as they interact, exchange ideas, trade goods and services, and make decisions. They influence one another during these interchanges and affect the structure and moral environment of society.

A Case Study of Ethics in Business: Enron

Atsushi Nakayama from the Japanese newspaper Nikkei conducted an interview with Kirk Hanson of Santa Clara University concerning the collapse of Enron. He surfaced the issues concerning lessons learned, reasons for the collapse, and why no one raised a voice over ethics within the company. Hanson named “the ethical quality of the culture of business” [2]as a lesson learned from this scandal. Concealing the truth about the company’s condition surfaced as a major reason for the company’s collapse. No one raised their voices because of a utilitarian ethic that permeated the company. The Board suspended the company’s code of conduct to give way to profitability. The dollar spoke and everyone listened. Commodity overruled the conscience and personal ethics. What was best for the stockholders became the company’s moral driving force.

Dennis Moberg of Santa Clara University identified character rather than action as the primary reason for the failure of Enron. He cites five internal character traits for its downfall: pride, anger, sloth, avarice, and cronyism.[3] Concerning sloth, Moberg points to the leadership for relaxing their ethical statements in 1991 “on behalf of these shenanigans with partnerships.” Moberg identified cronyism as an arrogant system of invincibility. Employees became targets through a “rank-and-yank performance appraisal system,” a method of getting rid of anyone who disagreed with their values. [4] Kirk Hanson suggested that utilitarian greed was at the root of the Enron debacle. He asserted, “Enron executives really did believe this is a winner-take-all-society – that there was a culture behind them saying, “You’re worth nothing if you’re not a centi-millionaire.” [5] The commodity mentality held sway over the entire corporate culture and became the value system for judging individual worth. They bred this mindset into every area of the business and based their personnel recruitment on it. Having captured employee allegiance through greed, this internal greed worked its way out into unethical behavior.

Private Behavior, Public Influence

The adage of “a behavior is not really wrong as long as it does not harm another” enters into the picture. Even if we apply this relative statement to the situation, do we obtain a clear answer concerning ethical boundaries? This kind of situational ethics cast a thick cloud over the issue of public or social versus private ethics and renders any solution unclear or without a broad application to society. Furthermore, it does not consider long-term effect. Nor does it regard the consequence it has on a host of other issues, such as integrity in business dealings, being truthful in all relationships, or attempts to cover up one’s behavior in other areas. If an employer engages in an extramarital affair with someone not within his or her company, are there not a number of behaviors involved, such as deceit, lying, cover-up, clandestine activity, avoidance, or denial of harm, wrongdoing, or a standard for behavior? Is there also not a disconnect between the behavior and its internal catalysts, such as lust, selfishness, sensuality, envy, or greed?

Sandcastle Ethics

The disconnect between behavior and the driving forces within our mind can easily lead a person to compromise on ethics and miss the connection between private and social ethics. If an indiscretion is not considered unethical in one instance and amoral in another, the lack of a moral foundation and the disconnect between the inner person and that person’s behavior is evident. Furthermore, if a person tends to disregard cause and effect of his or her motivations and behavior, there is a very real possibility he or she may also be performing a similar disregard between private and social ethics. Just as choice influences our behaviors and decisions, those decisions in turn find their way into the community and business dealings. Failure to make a connection between motive and behavior can easily lead to failure to connect private to social ethical behavior. This in turn leads to ethics built on the sands of the seashore. Those ethics will stand up as well as sandcastles during a storm. Sometimes the sand from our castles on the beach blinds us. Do we have sandcastles or solid structures for our ethics? Would you do business with a person or company having sandcastle ethics?

[1] Gill, David W., Social Ethics in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 2nd Edition, Ed. Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapid: Baker Book House, 2001), 1116-1117.

[2] Nakayama, Atsushi, Lessons from the Enron Scandal at Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA, http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/ethicalperspectives/ enronpanel.html, http://www.scu.edu/ethics /publications/ethicalperspectives/enronlessons.html, March 22, 2002.

[3] Moberg, Dennis, et al, What Really Went Wrong with Enron? A Culture of Evil? at Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA, http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/ ethicalperspectives/enronpanel.html, March 5, 2002.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.