Tom’s Tidbits- Ethics are annoying. Why bother?

“If honor were profitable, everybody would be honorable.” -Thomas More

Greetings,

I’m very proud and excited this month to announce that Tom Dwyer Automotive has been recognized with the Rotary Club’s 2018 Oregon Ethics In Business Award. It’s a true honor and validation of everything we do here at the shop, and there’s an article about it in this month’s newsletter that I really hope you read. But. I can’t help but thinking how sad it is we’re being recognized for something as fundamental as ethics. No one’s recognized for standout achievements in breathing because if you don’t breathe you don’t achieve much at all. To me it’s the same with ethics, and today’s world is teaching an excruciating lesson in exactly how dangerous a society without ethics can be…

Ethics aren’t some effete luxury, they’re foundational to everything humans do. They’re the unspoken rules of behavior we all assume from each other… that we’ll speak the truth as we know it, and that we’ll treat others with the fairness and respect we’d expect for ourselves. Virtually every interaction STARTS with these shared assumptions the other person won’t kill us, hurt us, steal from us, or lie to us. We might quickly be proven wrong, but we MUST start there before going any deeper… could you imagine talking with a teacher while wondering if they were about to stab you or if they were telling the truth about little Johnny’s grades? Because ethics are so interwoven into everything we do they don’t easily fit into neat little buckets like “business”, “politics”, or “personal”. Ethics are about how you deal with people wherever you find them.

We all realize the community value of ethical behavior, yet we also all know there are individual gains if we act unethically. Everyone succumbs to this temptation at times; there are few saints and as long as we’re dealing with human beings we’ll encounter human failures. It’s less about “if” we’ll have ethical lapses than how often, about what, and how hard we have to be pushed before we succumb. Not only that, but differing ethical codes mean two people might both think they’re being ethical yet behave completely differently. People (or companies) are often described as “ethical” or “unethical”, but that’s not right… it’s a spectrum, and the only accurate descriptors are “more” or “less” ethical.

Because they’re inter-personal our internal ethics are subject to interpersonal pressure. Some behaviors may be universally condemned (or applauded) but others have gray areas where peers and leaders decide what behavior is demanded, what is tolerated, and what can be punished. People soon adjust their internal standards to match these group standards… sometimes upward, but most easily and often downward. This is why unethical behavior is a cancer that spreads… once one person decides to cut corners, the group ethical standard changes from “what can we achieve together” to “what can I do without getting caught”. We need look no further than the Milgram Experiments, the Abu Ghraib abuses, or the mostly-not-evil German people swept along with the Third Reich to see how this works and how deep it can spiral. Being aware of group power doesn’t insulate us, but being unaware almost guarantees we’ll succumb.

In many groups it makes little sense to rely on individual integrity at all because, as I said, there are few saints. Unethical groups can corrode the strongest individuals so support for ethical behavior in large groups has to come from the group structure itself. As a business example, the commission-based compensation plans typical in the auto repair industry can be a major driver of unethical behavior. The standard of “if you don’t sell, you don’t eat” presents obvious ethical conflicts so we designed our structure to fight that. In our shop Technicians and Service Advisors work together to create your service recommendations. Neither is paid on commission, so neither is tempted to advise unnecessary work, cut corners, bill for work not done, or exaggerate bill times to pad a paycheck. Moreover, each person serves as a ‘check’ on the other to further ensure ethics and service quality. Eliminating structural temptation like this is one of the most effective ways any group can promote individual ethics.

Of course, reputation and appearance are critical in ethics. A person or company’s reputation is the sum of other’s experiences… did most people find you truthful, or trustworthy, or fair in your dealings? Is it a “good bet” that you’ll live up to the ethics you espouse? The appearance of impropriety can be just as deadly to a reputation as actual impropriety, especially in government. As one of the best examples, is it a good bet to think “your” issue can get a fair hearing from a Congressman taking massive unregulated contributions from lobbyists on the other side? Lobbying money doesn’t guarantee corruption but it appears to. A Congressman might still act ethically, but to expect he will? It‘s not a good bet for any rational person.

In the public consciousness, ethics have morphed from essentials of “good” people and solid relationships to a quaint exercise in Emily Post etiquette for naïve do-gooders. They’re seen as weakness instead of the strength they are. But again, Trump’s sole redeeming value may be that he’s showing what a world without ethics looks like and why ethical people can’t allow it. Untethered to truth or consensual reality, contemptuous of the values our society is based on, bitter and vindictive in every observable act, demanding of ethics in others yet fleeing them himself, he’s the poster child for why ethics are so necessary for all of us. Without ethics our personal lives can become shambles, our economic lives predatory jungles, our governments coercive plunderers, and our world can become an actual wasteland. Donald Trump is making the case just that plain, the choice just that stark.

As for me? I choose ethics. I choose to keep breathing.

Make a great day,

aaazTomSignature