Speaker says ethics go far in today's society
The message Thursday morning was clear — trustworthiness, respect, responsibility,
fairness, caring and citizenship are key elements in regaining America’s
moral footing.
Lloyd Hackley, former chair of the National Character Counts! Coalition, spoke
Thursday morning on the corporate advantages of being ethical, the key to ethical
decision making, character in the corporate culture and moral courage.
Approximately 40 people attended the presentation in the Comfort Inn Conference
Center, 2424 S. Mission St. The event was sponsored by the Mount Pleasant Area
Chamber of Commerce.
“I don’t for a moment believe it is my role to transform America or
Americans,” Hackley said. “If you’ve transformed yourself, you’ve
already changed the world.”
Hackley said the feeling that he is responsible to do something with the knowledge
he has prompted him to work with Character Counts!
Hackley left a position as president of North Carolina Community College System
because he believed what he was doing in that position was irrelevant to changing
the moral fabric of society.
“I didn’t get an education to hang out with politicians and others of
that level,” Hackley said.
“Soft skills” such as trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness,
caring and citizenship are neglected in today’s society, he said.
“We just simply believe you can ... teach character by osmosis. Any individual
that does not have (those) fundamental values is not worth knowing. If you don’t
have those things you have no business interacting with anybody.”
Hackley said many companies have good mission statements, but the values in them
are not followed by employees.
Disconnection between a company’s mission statement and the behavior of its
management and employees breeds cynicism and distrust, he said.
After compromising one time, the line between right and wrong gets fuzzy, Hackley
said.
“Once you step off what is 100 percent true, the slide is easy.”
Hackley said 75 percent of workers polled viewed illegal or unethical conduct
in the proceeding month, 50 percent believe their company would significantly
lose public trust if conduct was revealed, 40 percent failed to report unethical
and illegal conduct, 33 percent feared retaliation and 66 percent felt pressured
into compromising by an authority.
“Everybody thinks ‘it can’t happen here’ until it does,”
Hackley said.
“If you don’t deal with it, it’s going to get larger later.”
Hackley discussed the doctrine of “relative filth.
“Everybody is ethical in his own eyes,” he said. “It is the idea
that ‘I’m not so bad as long as others are worse’.
“We judge ourselves by our best intentions, our most noble acts and our most
virtuous habits,” he said. “Others judge us by our last worst act.”
Hackley said behavior is what people see.
“(People) are trying to use written laws to govern morality,” he said.
Good things happen to companies and individuals that consistently do the right
thing. Bad things tend to happen to companies and individuals that even occasionally
do the wrong thing, Hackley said.
“They are programmed to find the inconsistencies in what we do,” he
said. “Be very careful about the small things you do that send signals of
your hypocrisy.”
Hackley cited seven deadly sins in his presentation: wealth without work, commerce
without morality, pleasure without conscience, science without humanity, worship
without sacrifice, education without character and leadership without principle.
Hackley said 40 years ago virtuous citizenship was taught in schools as part of
government classes.
“Today the only thing we teach is how a bill becomes a law,” he said.
Virtuous citizenship instruction was not needed 40 years ago because students
weren’t confronted with the level of decadence people see today, Hackley
said.
Professional education has been so focused on the technical and cognitive aspects
of a profession that “students are professionally socialized not to attend
to moral conflicts,” Hackley said.
“College is an excellent place to start doing that. You don’t get good
by sort of happenstance.”
Hackley said in 90 percent of the ethical decisions people make they know what
the right choice is, the question is whether they will choose it or not.
People act unethically when: they are trying to make deadline, there is a lack
of resources, lack of understanding, peer pressure, pressure from higher up, belief
that their decision is not really unethical, belief that the act is in the best
interest of someone else, belief that it will never be discovered, and fear of
authority.
“The only way to save America is in our communities,” Hackley said.
“If you don’t care about what happens around you, then what kind of
human being are you?”
Communities and companies have a right and obligation to set standards for their
members, he said.
Lynette Collins, human resource specialist for Mid Michigan Industries, said she
enjoyed the presentation.
“It was pretty good. We feel that our organization as a whole is a very ethical
organization,” she said.
Connie Watson, director of professional and career development, said, “I
just think that it was a good message especially in terms of diversity appreciation.”
