Over the last few years, I have had the pleasure of providing ethics programs for a wide range of city, county, state, and provincial officials as well as their staff members. These folks are often the target, rightly or wrongly, of accusations of every imaginable type of ethics problem. Unfortunately, the widespread findings of confirmed corruption among such officials and their offices make them an ever-more easy target. Within this wide group of officials, however, city officials seems to be accused far more often than the others. (I am, admittedly, not certain whether this is due to an actually higher incidence of ethical problems at the city level or simply because there are a whole lot more city officials than there are county, state, and provincial ones. In either case, though, the number of city officials finding themselves in hot water over ethical issues is persistently staggering.)
Despite the high rate of ethics problems among city government officials and their staff, these are usually hardworking and caring people with a strong commitment to public service. So what could the problem possibly be?
The most frequent explanation I hear is that power corrupts. In this particular case though, I don't buy that, especially where anything other than criminal corruption has occurred. Why not? For starters, far too many of these folks simply don't have all that much power by which to be corrupted. Though a counter-argument could be that power is relative and any government position, by definition, provides some level of 'corruptable' power, I just don't see that happening in most of the cases of which I become aware. In fact, in at least some of these cases, the problem occurs when an official is trying to get a job done for which they have the responsibility but inadequate power and so they 'over-step' in some way to try to get the job done in the absence of having the actual authority to do it in the way in which it is supposed to be done. In the alternative, sometimes they act inappropriately in response to their frustration with the limits of their abilities to get the job done. None of this makes their inappropriate behavior acceptable, obviously, it just means that 'power corrupts' isn't really the issue in nearly as many cases as many folks want to assume.
So what is the problem with city government officials' ethics? In my experience, the problem is usually a whole lot simpler that it might seem. These aren't criminally-prone folks out looking for a way to use their jobs as a way to make a quick buck. (At least, there are no more of them doing that than in any other line of work.) Rather, they are folks under particular scrutiny, with positions of significantly-greater-than-average public trust, and whom are usually given no better training on ethics and values than any of the rest of the world.
True, in many states, city and county officials are taken through a basic 'always-do-this-and-never-do-that' review of the rules. However, those are typically brief, broad, generic, and without any follow-up. In other words, little guidance - or, at least, little really helpful guidance - is given that can effectively help shape the ethical thinking of new or returning officials or their staff. Instead, most city and county employees are simply told, in essence, "go out there and get a ton done and, oh-by-the-way, remember to always do the right thing ethically", all with the virtual absence of training on what it really means to do the right thing.
Like in any other field or industry, a little bit of well-conceived and well-implemented ethics and values training - coupled with appropriate oversight and coaching/mentoring - can help city officials do a far better job with ethics. Don't just tell them the rules, have them sign off on having received a copy of the ethics code, and leave it at that. Help them learn what the values are on which the rules are based and then show them clearly, carefully, and comprehensively how to focus on those values in their day-to-day decision-making. This isn't a complicated process but it's one that needs to be done in cities and counties of all sizes to help officials do a better job of building and maintaining their professional ethics. Once done, if done well, city and county officials will be able to far more consistently do the right thing ethically and, in turn, both earn and maintain the essential trust we all want to place in them.

Great Research (And Some Good News) From The Ethics Resource Center
The Ethics Resource Center has released this year's study of ethics in the workplace. It is no surprise that, as usual, it appears to have been an extremely well done piece of research. It is a surprise, and a pleasant one, that their findings show some unexpected positive progress in workplace ethics in the last year or two.
As usual, they mine their data well and their commentary deserves close attention. (In other words, the summary I'll provide here is really just the tip of an iceberg well worth exploring in depth if you have an interest in the state of corporate ethics in the U.S.) That said, here are some of the key findings, primarily as summarized in their executive summary...
Based on 2009 interviews with 2852 employees in the U.S. private sector, changes observed over the last two years include:
1. Seven percent fewer employees observed misconduct in the workplace.
2. Five percent more employees reported misconduct once observed.
3. Two percent fewer employees felt pressure to engage in misconduct.
4. (The one significant negative finding.) Three precent more employees perceived that they were retaliated against in some manner because of their having reported misconduct.
Again, these are simply a summary of their key findings and a thorough reading of the study provides a great deal more depth.
Among their warnings? That these findings may well represent a transient improvement and that companies need to pay close attention to passive or active pressures to return to 'business as usual' (i.e. a reversal - or worse - of the current findings.)
Among my warnings? It's great that these overall improvements have been reported. However, let's all remember that the above findings are relative to past findings and that many of the numbers, outside of that context, remain dismal at best. For example, in the ERC's sample, only 26% of employees perceived their top management's transparency to be "strongly open and informative", only 41% felt that all management levels in their organization were "strongly accountable", and in the ERC's extensive list of specific forms of misconduct observed by percentages of the workforce, few significant changes appear to have been made in the last two years. (Although, thankfully, most of the changes were in a positive direction, all but a few were only one or two percentage points different and it is not clear whether or not those changes, however positive looking, are actually statistically significant.)
As always, the ERC is to be commended on their great work of which these reports are but one component. Also as always, however, we need to stay well aware that even the positive changes shown by the current study are less heartening than we might like and that they may be entirely transient if we don't continue to work to improve both private and public sector sector ethics, not just in the U.S. but worldwide.
Posted at 11:21 AM in Current Affairs, Ethics and Values, Ethics Commentary, Fraud | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Technorati Tags: 2009 ethics, ethics, ethics research, workplace ethics