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ETHICS-
June 2003 by Dennis O'Connor Sidebar- “I generally
avoid temptation, unless I can’t resist it.” Patton’s own stumble from the ivory towers of government echo the steps of another well-known chief executive. Borrowing a page from former President Bill Clinton, Patton denied any connection to the Clinton, Ky., businesswoman until she convincingly sang her woes to a Louisville television camera crew. Just as the president realized there was no denying DNA evidence, Patton knew the jig was up, cut bait and played out his own version of Jimmy Swaggert’s “I have sinned.”
“I don’t think so, not compared to other criminal deals that politicians have gotten themselves into,” says Terry McBrayer, political guru and head of Frankfort-based consultants McBrayer, McGinnis, Leslie & Kirkland. “I don’t think you’ll find that there was money involved in this case. Paul Patton has been a great governor. This has been a very unfortunate chapter for him. But he’s certainly not a criminal. I think you really have to put this one in perspective.” OK, let’s do that: It’s not like the governor went out and hired Tony Soprano to conduct a hit on anybody. Nor is it similar to the 1992 BOPTROT scandal, when 15 Kentucky legislators were exposed for trading votes in Frankfort for favors and gifts – a tale of greed that has forced legislators to send their own kind to the hoosegow for similar infringements from now on. Still, the Patton story reflects an unhappy trend that has bubbled up like some disgusting muck across the country, infiltrating nearly every segment of our society. In politics, business and even personal affairs, tales of corruption, greed and just plain-old nastiness have become so commonplace that one begins to wonder if we aren’t all heading down the same disastrous trail the ancient Romans trod before their well-documented decline and fall a couple millenia past. So what gives? “I think, frankly, that it is becoming harder and harder for the man and woman of conscience to operate in the world today,” says Rev. Oliver Williams, an associate professor of management at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. Rev. Williams, who has been lecturing on ethics in the workplace for more than 20 years, suspects that we may all be victims of the successes of the American economic engine. “The very tools of our successful economic structure – capitalism – have also brought with them some sense of isolation,” creating an ethical vacuum where people in positions of power, left without peer structure to help build a moralistic frame of reference, fall prey to the numerous temptations there are in our very rich marketplace. Huge mega- conglomerates that operate world-wide sometimes have forced the individual into a kind of stasis that removes a contextual background they used to know, Rev. Williams says. The Internet, merged media giants and the super-internationals all have helped create an unfamiliar commonality in which, frankly, it’s every man for himself. And then there is greed. “Today, right now and for the past decade, we all have come to realize that capitalism has won as the most effective and efficient economic system on the planet,” Rev. Williams says. “Communism failed. Socialism failed. Capitalism has empirically shown it can produce wealth better than any system.” But where that wealth goes becomes an important question. Houston-based Enron made a mockery of the system with its house of cards and mirrors, boosting its stock value on misstated earnings and phantom companies that in reality were shell games set up to line the pockets of a select few executives with greenbacks. Accounting firms who purportedly were hired to turn away Enron-style fraud turned out to be in cahoots with the biggest players as well. Following the decline of Arthur Anderson, like falling dominoes, companies began to reveal that, well, yes, they may have overstated earnings a bit. And no, they were not doing as well as they had been telling the public and their shareholders. Even Wall Street investment bankers in recent weeks have fallen under ominous shadows, admitting conflicts of interest in many cases as they urged clients to buy-buy-buy from their, ahem, other clients. And it’s not just politics and business where you’ll find questions of ethical propriety. Over the past year, the Roman Catholic Church has been covered up with a devastating revelation of ministers betraying their trust by abusing children and becoming involved in other brands of unmentionable sexual behavior. Kentucky’s right in the middle of that mess, too.
On the up side, there’s good news out there in the Commonwealth. There are people of character, as Rev. Williams notes, who are willing to face the challenges of temptation and greed. In Northern Kentucky, the regional chamber of commerce recently completed its annual work-ethic program, matching school kids with employers in an opportunity to have the students learn about dressing for success, showing up for the job and, probably most important, stepping inside an ethical framework so they have a pretty good understanding of what’s right and what’s wrong. Shannon Boyer, who’s in her second year running the program, says the students often participate in some kind of service program as well, in an environment where they learn that it is important to give back to society, not just to take, take and take. In Louisville, attorney James N. Williams (no relation to the Notre Dame professor) tries to elevate the level of ethical framing within corporations at the board-room level, where decisions can be made to do the right thing. The equity director at Middleton Reutlinger, who sits in on these high-level discussions for a wide spectrum of clients, helps corporate boards navigate through what can be treacherous waters of ethical conduct, looking out for conflicts of interest and other potential reefs in the current. But Jim Williams has a simple piece of good ol’ Kentucky advice that probably isn’t brought up much at power lunches: “If you know you want to frame a question in the appropriate moral context, just ask, ‘What would Mom think?’” That, of course,
would solve a lot of ethical conundrums, now wouldn’t it?
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is copyright 2003, Lane Communications Group The Lane Report is a trademark of Lane Communications Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
Sure,
it was tacky. It was a little disgusting. And just thinking about it,
well, you didn’t want to do that. But was it a big deal?
The
end result? Well, people are pretty fed up. They want accountability
from their leaders – political, business and religious honchos
alike. They want to know that their elected officials are doing their
jobs, not stealing their money and acting with at least a modicum of
what one might expect from a decent human being. They want their corporate
leaders to tell the truth about earnings; they want to know that if
they make an investment, they’ve been given all the pertinent information
that is available so they can channel their hard-earned money. And they
want to know that their children are going to be safe in the presence
of their minister.