Why Public Sector Ethics Training Is (Usually) Irrelevant

As many of you have heard me speak about, there has - to my mind - been an alarming trend in recent years to narrow "public sector ethics" down to a small repetitive list of topics including undue influence, sunshine laws, recusal, and conflict of interest. Of course each of these is terribly important.

However:

1.) These are, for the most part, really a matter of rules that can easily be read and reviewed by any official and employee at any time. So, why would you spend all of your training time and money on them?

2.) To the extent that you do choose to spend training time and money on these topics - and you absolutely need to be spending some -  shouldn't the focus be less on beating the rules into folks' heads and more on helpful discussions and problem-solving around the areas where employees and officials see barriers or loopholes that could lead to problems in strictly following those rules?

3.) Please, please, please remember that despite stereotypes and assumptions to the contrary, the overwhelming majority of legal and ethical problems encountered by local government officials and employees are exactly the same as those seen in the private sector. Hostile work environment issues, subtle - or sometimes not-so-subtle - discrimination actions, coercive relationships. misuse of funds, etc. If your ethics training doesn't cover these areas, and cover them well, you are setting your local government up for trouble.

Given all of the above, it will be important to remember to focus your ethics and values training far more broadly than is currently typically done.

So, are public sector ethics irrelevant? Absolutely not!  However "public sector ethics training" often is. The ways in which those ethics have usually been defined - and the ways in which they have usually been trained on - all-too-often make them dramatically less relevant than they need to be.