Christopher Bauer's Ethics Nexus

New Blog: Goodbye Ethics Nexus - Hello Trust Foundry

This is a long-overdue note to let you all know that I have now consolidated my three previous blogs into one. Your support of the Ethics Nexus blog has been greatly appreciated and I hope that you will now follow my posts at The Trust Foundry. All prior posts to this blog can be found there as well.

Thanks!

Want Better Government Ethics? Then Pay Less Attention To Them!

Several readers of my monthly Municipal Ethics Tips and Trends newsletter suggested that part of this month's edition might have broader implications than just to local governments. Could well be. With that hope, here is a slightly adapted version:

Improve government ethics by paying less attention to them? Really? Well, kinda, yeah.

 

As I work more and more with government officials and employees, I have seen an unfortunate and terribly destructive trend in how government ethics are defined. That trend is to see them as strictly involving a very narrow band of legal mandates including such things as conflict of interest, recusal, undue influence, etc. Each of these is critically important, of course, and every official and employee needs to know, with clarity, what the rules are regarding them. However, this short list of mandates, however important, is really wildly insufficient if the goal is to help government officials and employees prevent the more common ethical and legal risks actually seen on the job.

 

What else needs to be trained on? It's really the same list as is needed in every other type of business setting. A good 'starter list' includes training on hostile work environment issues, non-discrimination issues, the basics of fraud detection in the workplace, do's and don'ts of confronting others on ethics concerns, do's and don'ts regarding consulting on ethics concerns, and training on how officials and employees can think better on their feet when it comes to both recognizing and responding to the broadest possible range of potential ethics issues on the job. In my experience, only the first two of these areas are routinely covered in 'government ethics training' - and then usually only in a cursory way - and yet problems in the entire range of these areas collectively account for far more problems than do the areas more typically covered in government ethics training.

 

Whose job is it to assure that this broader approach to ethics training is put into place?  Other than at a federal level, I often hear that it is HR's responsibility to do it. However I hear from a good many government HR folks that they don't actually have the authority to even offer this type of training let alone require it. (They can and should heartily lobby for this type of training, of course, but may not ultimately be have the power to assure that it happens.) In my experience, more thorough ethics training usually needs to be set up by agency or department heads regardless of the level of government, by city managers when at the local level, etc. Whether they can offer it versus requiring it is different from place to place and agency or department to agency or department. However, they certainly have the authority to put the training process in place.

If you work in government and have the authority to set up more thorough ethics training than what your officials and employees are getting now, use it! If you don't have that authority, be sure to work with those who do to help them see the value in ethics training that goes well beyond what we usually see as 'government ethics'. The return on investment in that training - for government officials and employees at all levels of government - can be huge. (And, of course, that's before calculating the even broader return for the citizens for whom those officials and employees are working.)

What Milton, NY Understands About Ethics That Most Businesses Don't

My catching up on goings-on around the country for my Municipal Ethics News and Views blog started with this piece blaring the opinion that the San Diego ethics commission is an expensive redundancy that overreaches. Now if it's true that they are "hiring a new investigator to check whether campaigns are using 12-point type for their 'paid for by' lines, as required by city law, instead of the 6-point type required under state law", I share some of the writer's concern. However, the central argument is that most of the local ethics code is already covered by state law. Maybe so, but does the state have both the resources and the interest in monitoring local government ethics at the same level as local governments do? With rare exceptions, I hardly think so. Bravo to San Diego - as well as the other California cities with their own ethics commissions - for taking the proverbial bull by the horns and assuring that their city's ethics stay in line. Is there a question about how they are spending their resources? If so, that needs to be openly discussed and challenged - but not used as the foundation for a wholesale dismissal of the importance of the commission and its overall mission.

It's easy to attack local government ethics codes, or the code of any organization, for exactly the reasons they need to be in place - they require that those covered by the code do what is right as opposed to what is merely easy or convenient at the time. This piece from Macon.com quotes councilman James Timley as saying of their ethics code, “I didn’t vote for it... You want to do all this stuff that makes you feel good and look good, but I told you this would come back to get us.” Now I need to allow both that this quote might be out of context in the article and that I haven't seen the Macon code. However, the sentiment is a both common and unfortunate one. This happens to be regarding a local government ethics code but it's a complaint is heard throughout the private sector as well.

If one doesn't support an ethics code because it truly does overreach or because it is either toothless or otherwise unenforceable, you have my total support. However, in that case, work to create a more appropriate document and enforcement structure, not dismiss the idea of a code! That a code makes some things less convenient is a ludicrous reason to attack it, assuming that the inconvenience is simply due to assuring that officials and employees are doing the right thing. Should codes be as 'user-friendly' as possible? Absolutely! But, like it or not, sometimes doing the right thing in government, business, or anywhere else for that matter, is not what happens to be the most convenient.

Meanwhile, little Milton, New York seems to 'get it'. After, apparently, a history of ethics concerns, they decided that they needed to take some serious steps towards assuring improved ethics and did exactly that. In fact, as this piece from the Saratogian reports, they managed to do what most far larger governments and businesses haven't been able to achieve - they got everyone into the same room, decided in a bipartisan manner what needed to be addressed, and then did exactly that. Bravo! Of course, their code has yet to be formalized and approved but - if the reports of their start are any indication - they are truly well ahead of the pack compared both to many local governments and businessses.

When Is Ethics Training Not Really Ethics Training?

I just posted a similar version of this over at my Municipal Ethics News and Views blog last night and realized that it really belongs on here as well. Readers of this blog won't be surprised by these comments but I guess I never get tired of talking about this issue...

When is ethics training not really ethics training? All the time, it seems!

It is amazes me how often ethics training programs are proudly trotted out by providers or clients only to find that they fall into one (or more) of three barely-even-marginal categories:

• Programs that only review the rules. There are obviously lots of rules and everyone needs to know them. However, reviewing the rules, in itself, is hardly ethics training. Employees at all levels of a company need to know how to put the rules into practice, how to easily spot problems and potential problems in themselves and others, and what to do when they see those problems and potential problems. Simply knowing the rules doesn't help them learn those essential skills and yet it's exactly a lack of those skills that causes far more ethics problems than does a lack of knowing the rules. 

• Programs that don't discuss the values and principles the rules are there to reinforce. If employees don't understand the values and principles on which the rules are based, then how are they going to know how best to apply the rules? More importantly - and I know that my audiences get tired of my repeating this - if you're going to expect people to act ethically, they better have a pretty good idea of what to do when there isn't a rule for something! Frankly, I have no idea how to make that happen without talking at least as much about values as the rules.

• Programs, regardless of what they cover, that simply provide a written or PowerPoint-driven review. (And to add insult to injury, these programs are often followed by - or sometimes even substituted with - some kind of fairly meaningless canned test.) Might that approach be useful for giving folks a basic overview or reminder of a few simple things? Sure. But let's not fool ourselves - that type of 'training' is really better at meeting risk management oversight objectives than anything else (i.e. "It's not our fault! That employee was required to review that material and pass a ten point test on it every single year!"). Please... If you want folks to really 'get' ethics, you'd better use a training program that allows them to actively discuss the real-world issues they face and to problem-solve around any barriers they see to making good on their ethical and legal mandates.

In my experience, far too many organizations are entrenched in using these three substantially sub-par approaches. In fact, they are so used to them that they will often actually ask for them when presented with an alternative. When I say that I do programs that are largely interactive and that I do far more than just review the rules, these types often look puzzled or annoyed. To them, doing more than the bare minimum feels inefficient, unnecessary or just plain weird. Unfortunately, the fallout from those attitudes shows up in the countless needless and costly ethics problems we read about in the newspapers every single day. 

I certainly sleep better at night knowing that I offer programs that most audiences find to be extremely practical. After all, that's what they really need.

 

I certainly sleep better at night knowing that I offer programs that most audiences find to be extremely practical. After all, that's what they really need.

 

Ethics Resources for Municipal Officials, Employees and Associations

Thanks to all of you who have already subscribed to my new "Municipal Ethics Tips and Trends" newsletter! A couple of other new resources have also been put into place in the last couple of weeks for municipal officials, employees, contractors, and associations. First of all, I have just started a new blog ("Municipal Ethics News and Views") which I hope you'll check out - just a couple of posts there so far but the content should be growing quickly. I have also put together a small new website (www.MunicpalEthics.com) which provides information on my ethics programs for city officials, employees, and associations as well as having a resources page.

A number of folks have asked if my new municipal ethics blog and newsletter will impact this blog or my Weekly Ethics Thought. Nope. They are simply additional resources for a specific, if rapidly-growing potion of my speaking audiences and readers.

Municipal Ethics Tips & Trends Newsletter Now Available

As I work more and more with city officials and employees, I have had a progressive number of requests for a newsletter focusing specifically on municipal ethics. It's now off the ground. This brief monthly newsletter will, in its current incarnation, include one 'how to' type tip and one piece of reporting/commentary on an emerging trend in city ethics. It certainly may expand in time but, for now, that's the plan. Cost? Free, free, free!

The new newsletter is called Municipal Ethics Tips and Trends and if you'd like to check it out, you can subscribe here.

Although Municipal Ethics Tips and Trends will be written with city officials, employees and contractors in mind, it will certainly be germane to officials and employees from all levels of government as well as any contractors who service government contracts.