Lessons on Business Ethics from Jurassic World
Caveni Wong

Explaining Ethics and Compliance to a Football Fan
Caveni Wong

(First published on LinkedIn)

Amid the über (pardon the pun) polarized political environment today, it’s easy to vilify the perpetrator of the latest Uber scandal in which David Bonderman, a Board member, made a joke about women talking too much – at a meeting about sexism.

I don’t know if he’s truly sexist, or he just made an unfortunate and ill-timed sexist joke, which in the past may have been perfectly acceptable in his experience of the business world.

And there lies the issue as I see it.

The many people at Uber – and elsewhere in the business world – who exhibit sexist behavior may not think they’re sexists. And since so many others are doing the same thing, the behavior appears perfectly normal and they don’t think any less of themselves, and thus nothing needs to change.

It’s like Bernie Madoff who didn’t think of himself as a bad person, nor Bruno Gernandes de Souza, a Brazilian goalie who killed his ex-girlfriend and fed her to dogs. They both believed that they just made “mistakes.”

And because sexist behavior is often accepted or excused to the tunes of “Oh Dave is really a nice guy and means no harm,” the behavior becomes the norm, allowed to perpetuate by both men and women.

To truly change the culture at Uber, implementing the list of recommendations that Eric Holder published would be a good start, but they’ll need more than that.

They’ll need to redefine a new normal and leverage the powers of sociology to make change. Specifically, they may want to heed the advice that Professor Jeni Cross so eloquently explained in her TedX talk:

• How you present information is important – make the information tangible, personal, and interactive;
• Change behavior in order to change attitude, not the other way around; and
• Don’t underestimate the power of social norms in motivating action.

Uber may be the most visible, but it is nowhere near the only company that needs to change its culture. The rest of the business world that hasn’t gotten the memo should take note.

To Change Uber, Use Sociology
Caveni Wong

By Caveni Wong, Founder and Principal

(First published on LinkedIn)

At a recent dinner with fellow Duke MBA alumni, after explaining what I did for work (helping companies sustain an ethical culture), I was once again hit with the question “Yeah but how do you measure it?”

Even as our profession tries its darnest, there’s still no clear-cut answer. In fact, at the SCCE Compliance and Ethics Institute this year, over a hundred of us spent a 3-hour workshop dedicated to answering that question, which resulted in something like “It’s not easy but start with something and let’s keep working at it.”

Frankly, I’m sick and tired of the question.

To this alumnus, I responded, “Yes, it is difficult to measure. But how do you quantify being a good person? How do you quantify raising kids with good values? Do you measure how much more money they make by being good people vs. criminals?

“However there are proxies. Retention rate – how many people stay because they like their company and don’t leave any time someone offers them a bit more money? By productivity – how much more productive are your employees if they come to work not having to worry about being harassed?

“And reputation. How do you measure having a good reputation that makes employees join your company and clients buy from you?

“What do you think makes up ‘good will’ when you valuate a company?”

Another alumnus at the table, a Chief Operating Officer, chimed in: “At our company, culture is everything. We keep good people from taking other external opportunities because they like working here.” At his company, all employees are “team members,” the culture familial. It thrives by having a good reputation and by building strong relationships. That doesn’t happen if the company cuts corners and operates unethically.

He also gave an example of a partnership that ultimately didn’t work out because the cultures and values of the two parties didn’t align. His challenge in the future as the company plans to double and triple in size is to sustain this culture.

So no, I don’t feel compelled to spin my wheels trying to come up with an ROI for an ethical corporate culture. And MBAs who know a thing or two about running a business should stop asking.

What’s the ROI of an Ethical Culture?
Caveni Wong

What does an illegal football tackle in Japan have to do with ethical decision making? More than you’d think, as it turned out.

In a news conference as reported in a NY Times article, the offending player claimed that he was told by his coaches to “crush” the quarterback, with the goal of causing injury. He apologized for being “too weak” and not being “strong enough to say no” to the coaches’ order.

Lest you think that this only happened in Japan because of the cultural norm to obey authority, recall the central tenet of the movie A Few Good Men, in which two U.S. Marines followed orders against their moral judgment and led to the death of a fellow Marine.

In fact, following orders even when it goes against one’s moral judgment is so common that social psychologists gave it a name: displacement of responsibility. By blaming an authority figure, one can excuse him/herself from taking responsibility for the unethical conduct. It is one of many ways with which we practice moral disengagement – the act of distancing ourselves from the unethical conduct that we commit.

Moral disengagement is practiced throughout history in misdeeds and atrocities around the world, including the Holocaust. Below is a list of the many methods:

• Moral justification: the ends justify the means
• Euphemistic labeling: “borrowing” not “stealing”
• Advantageous comparison: someone else behaved much worse than I did
• Distortion of consequences: no one would even notice it; I don’t even know the victims
• Dehumanization of victims: those people are animals, they aren’t like us
• Displacement of responsibility: my manager made me do it
• Diffusion of responsibility: everyone does it
• Blaming the victim: they asked for it

The real danger of moral disengagement is that the perpetrator is not often aware that the action is unethical. Multiply that by whole teams, divisions, and management ranks, and a company could have a huge problem. Just Google “biggest corporate scandals” and you’ll find plenty of examples in which the companies’ misdeeds are enabled by tens, hundreds or even thousands of their own employees.

For a company to have an ethical culture, employees must not only know what the ethical standards are, they must also fend off temptations to morally disengage. This doesn’t happen magically. An ethical culture requires deliberate efforts to achieve. These efforts don’t have to be costly or complicated; they just need to be genuine and persistent.

Do you have any personal examples of moral disengagement?

Contact Principle Compliance to learn how we can help enhance your company’s ethical culture.

“My Manager Made Me Do It” and Other Excuses
Caveni Wong

If you have ever despaired over dull and tedious compliance training, #TheGoodPlace, now in its third season on NBC, should give you some hope. It proves that serious concepts do not have to be presented in dry, boring and complicated ways.

In the show, Eleanor, a horrible person who dies and gets sent to “The Good Place” by mistake, tries to become a better person to avoid being sent to “The Bad Place.” Helping her in her quest is Chidi, an ethics professor who introduces her to moral philosophers to the likes of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Kant.

As Chidi continues to teach ethics and philosophy, the characters inadvertently act out in ways that lead to true learning. For example, early in season one, Eleanor realizes for the first time that her selfishness causes others around her to suffer. Later, she argues self-servingly that under Utilitarianism, the end justifies the means. Season two delivers dialogue gems such as “I have to keep lying; I’m in too deep,” and “Moral strength is defined by how we behave in times of stress,” – lines that are no stranger to ethics and compliance professionals.

As the show progresses, perhaps the most powerful reminder is that knowing what one should do does not always lead to what one would do. Which means, making sure that employees know what’s right from wrong is a good first step; but making sure that they act ethically in the face of “very concrete sacrifice,” as stated eloquently in an NPR article, is the hardest but ultimate goal to achieve.

So, if you need inspiration to take your #ComplianceTraining or #ComplianceProgram to a better place, schedule The Good Place as your next binge session on Netflix. (Don’t worry, I haven’t given any spoilers away.)

The Good Place for Ethics and Compliance Training
Caveni Wong

Ethics and compliance professionals have long been aware that a policy by itself is useless. A policy is a simple and necessary first step to set the standard, but it’s the sustained efforts to implement and enforce the policy that leads to actual compliance.

A company may draft a policy, house it somewhere that employees can’t easily find, send a mass email announcement, then consider it “implemented.” This approach may be good enough to satisfy external stakeholders by having something to share with clients or auditors, but does nothing to impact behavior in real life. A sustained implementation effort requires time and resources beyond sending the occasional mass email, an investment that budget holders may not be willing to make. However, without such investment, it’s like establishing a destination but not providing the path to get there.

This happens in law as well. For example, in India, despite its Constitution and subsequent laws over many decades prohibiting discrimination, lower caste Indians are still attacked – beaten, killed, stoned – for wearing the wrong shoes, riding a horse, sitting cross-legged, or changing a name on social media, as reported several years ago by the BBC. Perpetrators often walk away scot-free.

In China, despite various agreements and laws since 1979 protecting intellectual property, enforcement has been (deliberately and strategically, some would argue) lax and uneven. Only recently, perhaps because international pressure has mounted and China has developed enough of its own IP to protect, enforcement is seen as improving.

Of course, having a policy or law is better than having nothing. But it’s only the first step if desired behaviors are the goal. Employees shouldn’t be expected to find themselves to the desintation on their own, and ethics & compliance professionals shouldn’t be expected to bushwhack a path. As corporations declare their strong values and ethical standards, they must also commit to the efforts it takes to support those statements.

What is your company doing to align behavior and culture with policy?

Contact Principle Compliance if you wish to improve the effectiveness of your company’s policies.

Updated from post first published on June 20, 2018

Just Because a Policy Exists Doesn’t Mean There Is Compliance
Caveni Wong