By G.
Jeffrey MacDonald
In the mid-1990s, executives at pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers
Squibb were counting on big results from Capoten, a hot new drug
for lowering blood pressure, when unwelcome news crossed their
desks.
Studies of pregnant women were beginning to suggest Capoten
could cause serious problems in the fetus. Top company executives
mulled their options carefully: Should the drug be pulled? Should
a warning label immediately be applied?
"People asked the question . . . Is this really something we
have to do? Is it really necessary?'" says Thomas Costa '80J.D.,
in-house counsel for Bristol-Myers Squibb. Warning labels did
soon appear on Capoten bottles, but the episode nevertheless became
a cautionary tale that Costa now tells to show how easy it can
be for leaders to have an ethical lapse.
"The core issue [for most leaders] is not someone stealing $1,000
from the treasury," Costa says. It's usually more subtle, yet
with equally high stakes, he says, as confident executives often
unknowingly drift into making the wrong decisions.
As headlines of recent years have made painfully clear, smart
people are far from immune to devastating ethical missteps. Bill
Clinton, for instance, romanced an intern and almost lost his
presidency. Former Boston Archbishop Bernard Cardinal Law resigned
in disgrace in 2002 from one of the Church's most prestigious
posts because he'd been unwilling to remove a known pedophile
from ministry. Acclaimed CEOs Martha Stewart, Dennis Kozlowski
of Tyco International and Bernard Ebbers of WorldCom have all
faced prison sentences for putting a deceptively bright façade
over problem situations.
Religion is apparently no moral panacea, either. Former Enron
CEO Kenneth Lay led regular Bible studies even as he allegedly
defrauded investors and employees. And although former Adelphia
Communications CEO John Rigas won praise for his Catholic stance
barring porn from his cable empire, such kudos evaporated when
a jury in 2005 sentenced him to 15 years for covering up billions
in loans to family members.
Extreme as these cases may be, the figures involved seemed to
see themselves as most people do, that is, as morally upstanding
citizens. Yet for anyone on a pedestal of authority, such a self-concept
can easily produce a destabilizing pride. Pride can make one's
own moral failings hard to see and in turn bring disaster within
arm's reach, according to Father Oliver F. Williams, CSC, director
of Notre Dame's Center for Ethics and Religious Values in Business.
"In a sense, we can almost persuade ourselves of something that
isn't the case," says Williams '61, '69M.A. "Self-deception is
such a powerful instinct, particularly with bright people, that
one has to find regular practices to help clear that."
Not all experts in ethics and leadership use the same terms
to describe what happens inside talented people to cloud their
moral compasses. While some invoke notions of original sin and
grace, for instance, others speak of power as a compelling idol
or, in non-theological terms, as a potent intoxicant. Some emphasize
the insidious influence of a power-obsessed culture; others detect
a perennial human struggle that rears its head in every age.
The seductiveness of power
No matter the terms they use, the experts stress the need for
leaders to be disciplined. Leaders should cultivate awareness
of their true motives, experts advise, and enlist blunt input
from at least one trusted confidant. But first, whether a person
leads a small household or a 1,000-person company, he or she needs
to understand why successful people are especially vulnerable
to ethical lapses.
In childhood, everyone contends with "moral viruses," such as
thinking that "might makes right" or "my needs are most important,"
says Doug Lennick, a leadership consultant and co-author of Moral
Intelligence. This thinking ideally gets reformed over time,
he says, through the influence of caring adults. But in his view,
those impulses don't disappear altogether. Instead they lie dormant
or neutralized until circumstances -- such as the attainment of
authority and power -- permit them to resurface.
"Power is seductive," Lennick says. "Two, power is even intoxicating.
And three, power can be addictive. And so when people are in positions
of power, it allows for them to act out, if you will, and to act
on some of those moral viruses they might be carrying with them.
It allows them to justify in their own minds some of the things
they do, which you and I might agree are moral missteps."
Lennick says it's easy to start believing, perhaps on a subconscious
level, that "I'm better than most people, and my position proves
that. If I wasn't better than most people, I wouldn't have this
position." Yet such ideas can subtly foster a presumption of entitlement
that sees no infraction, for instance, with traveling in style
on business trips or assigning contracts to family members who
could use a break. And if colleagues are taking these sorts of
liberties with no consequences, wouldn't your refusal to take
them make you something of a chump, instead of the accomplished
person that you are?
Sometimes professionals are just trying to make their numbers
when lapses happen. Managers and investors looking for certain
level of revenue at quarter's end may find it tempting to count
deals as finished when they aren't, says Paul Stich '84MBA, chief
executive officer of Counterpane Internet Security, a privately
held firm with 100 employees in Mountain View, California.
"When people are having their business evaluated in 12-week
cycles, that's a very difficult position to be in," says Stich.
"There are always lots of temptations that come along. . . . You
can't tell that first white lie because it's that first one that
leads to the second, third and fourth."
What's more, for a leader to regard a company or department
as "mine" can enhance success by taking pride in results, but
only to a point, says Sydney Finkelstein, a strategy professor
at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Management and author of
Why Smart Executives Fail. Those who see an enterprise as
a reflection of themselves can be tempted to cover up its warts,
a move that can spell disaster.
"They are completely unable to allow the truth of some degree
of failure, or at least not meeting expectations, to come out,"
Finkelstein says. "An aggressive organization that has grown dramatically,
that has been successful in the past, begins to fall apart. The
possibility of letting that information out -- acknowledging to
the world that you're not quite as successful as you made out
to be and as everyone thinks you are -- becomes unacceptable.
And that's when some of the numbers are being fudged."
In these dynamics, Finkelstein smells irony.
"Some of the same habits and behaviors that helped bring these
people to success and to the top, if left unchanged, very often
lead to their downfall."
A common belief
Struggles with the moral pitfalls of leadership are hardly unique
to the early 21st century. In the Old Testament, Israel's King
Saul gets so consumed with jealousy and distrust that he becomes
powerless to execute his original good intentions. His successor,
King David, enjoys the Lord's blessings in abundance, yet even
he slips and orders Uriah the Hittite killed in order to take
the man's wife. In the New Testament, Judas forfeits his privileged
place among Jesus' 12 apostles in exchange for a sack of coins.
Yet although the human condition may be timeless, experts regard
today's dominant cultural forces as less than helpful for those
leaders who wish to rise above temptation.
In today's society, our common belief is that leaders will always
do what's best for themselves because they are, after all, human,
notes Michael Maxwell, director of the Center for Ethics in Business
and the Professions at Marian College in Indianapolis.
Leaders who wish to conduct themselves ethically need to rethink
this motive of self-interest and be prepared to suffer personally
for a greater good than their own immediate well-being. Doing
so taps into ancient wisdom, Maxwell says, about finding great
joy in pursuing noble goals and letting pleasure unfold over time
as a mere by-product. For a taste from this countercultural font,
he suggests drinking deeply from the Catholic tradition.
Writing in the late 4th and early 5th century, Saint Augustine
held that even though human beings regularly pursue their own
short-term gain to the detriment of others, doing so is in fact
"unnatural" -- contrary to humanity's original purpose. True human
nature, once restored by grace, Augustine argued, is magnanimous
and oriented to care deeply about such genuine goods as love of
neighbor and justice.
If Augustine and all his theological descendants were right
about this, then today's leaders are not doomed by nature to keep
fudging ethical boundaries. But just where does a busy leader
turn for a helping of Augustine's requisite grace at a moment's
notice? That's where the regular disciplines of self-awareness
and spiritual counsel become indispensable.
People who do well in life, Lennick says, generally receive
lots of guidance as youngsters for behavior commendable and reprehensible
alike. But once they've attained substantial authority in adulthood,
he says, colleagues seldom offer the candid input which all people
-- especially those who abide in a fish bowl -- require to lead
a moral life.
"It's [a matter of] one being sheltered from the feedback,"
Lennick says. Or in the words of Notre Dame management professor
Robert Vecchio, those in a leader's inner circle "are probably
paid to be supportive."
"Natural forces do lead you to be put up on a pedestal as somebody
very, very special, so you have to work actively against that,"
Finkelstein says. "We often talk about the 'yes men' or the 'yes
women' surrounding a leader, and that will happen unless you make
it your business to hire, train, develop people who are unafraid
to say what they're thinking. And you also have to model that
behavior. You have to demonstrate to others that you can take
a critique that is on the merits."
For this reason, leadership consultants urge successful people
to confide their dilemmas and true motives to at least one other
person. Father Williams says he hears frequently from former Master
of Business Administration students who now lead organizations
or departments and face thorny conflict-of-interest situations.
Others might confide in a spouse or friend outside the firm, Williams
says. But the key is to have someone with good judgment and sufficient
fortitude to tell the truth, even when it hurts.
"A well-informed conscience" evolves as others offer honest
input, Williams says. "Humility," he adds, involves "acknowledging
I don't have the only window on the world."
All this sounds good, Finkelstein says, but in reality, potentially
destructive patterns are rarely examined. He points out that the
business section of any given bookstore is crowded with tales
of success and accomplishment. "People don't like to think about
failure or talk about failure." Finkelstein says he wrote his
book in part because no one else was looking closely at the growing
phenomenon of failed leadership.
"We always say we learn from our mistakes, but how often is
it really the case that we do?" Finkelstein asks. "I wanted to
test that. My conclusion is that people do not learn from their
mistakes very often, not the right lessons." People don't like
to examine their weaknesses, he notes, and leaders seldom have
much time for backward-looking analysis anyway.
About that conscience
For those serious about identifying their own ethical blind spots,
experts say nothing is more important than what Williams calls
a "well-informed conscience." And although conscience is a built-in
asset, it seems to atrophy at times in successful adults unless
they take intentional steps to keep it vital.
A successful career may require the support of a faith community,
says Notre Dame business ethicist Robert Audi. In the case of
Catholicism, for instance, the Church's ideals serve to counterbalance
prevailing messages in today's society, which seem to glorify
power as an end rather than as a means to promoting the common
good.
"Catholic social teaching emphasizes the primacy of people over
property, the importance of attention to the poor and stewardship
of the environment," Audi says. "Those are ideals that are strengthened
by the Christian tradition and tend to be weakened by secularization.
It's certainly not impossible for secular people to respect those
ideals, but they gain strength from the Christian tradition."
What's more, in an age of hectic schedules, leaders can pay
a hefty price when their time for quiet reflection disappears,
says Dallas Willard, a professor of philosophy at the University
of Southern California. To keep one's conscience in shape, Willard
suggests, leaders should set aside a few minutes for routine,
highly introspective journaling. And to make sure the habit does
its job, he recommends asking two specific questions: "When have
I served the [ultimate] good of my function? And when have I served
myself?" These practices, done with sincerity, can yield a greater
measure of crucial self-awareness, he says, than any amount of
ethical training.
"What is called 'professional ethics' is basically rules for
how to stay out of trouble," Willard says. "One must be reflective
to know why you do what you do" in order to bring persistent moral
blind spots and warped desires into focus. Only then, he says,
can they be reformed, with help from a trusted confidant, into
passions that lead to genuine joy.
Spotting the trouble spots
For even the most self-effacing of successful people, spotting
one's own ethical trouble spots can be a challenge. That's because,
Finkelstein says, even if a leader genuinely wants honest feedback
about personal conduct, he or she seldom gets it from colleagues
or friends who fear retribution on some level. In this regard,
successful people might forever need to live with a measure of
uncertainty about their own ethical conduct, since they often
can't recognize their own infractions and others usually don't
dare to point them out.
Yet a healthy sense of self-doubt might not be a bad trait in
a leader, says Rev. Steven Shussett, associate for spiritual formation
at the Presbyterian Church (USA).
"When people are sure they know the answer [to a moral dilemma],
you can be certain they don't," Shussett says. "People respect
someone who can say, 'given the information we have, this is the
decision we have made. Should other information come along, we
are prepared to think it through differently.'"
Still, accomplished people hoping to use their power as a force
for good aren't likely to celebrate such ambiguity, USC's Willard
says. Those certain about what constitutes right and wrong, he
argues, stand a chance to catch themselves going astray.
Sometimes companies establish guidelines designed to clarify
ethical behavior. At Bristol-Myers Squibb, Costa says, various
departments cooperate to keep sales representatives informed about
what's "in the safe zone" ethically and legally to discuss with
physicians. Yet he notes that bright representatives with advanced
degrees sometimes get bored with the safe zone and feel tempted
to reach sales targets by discussing, for instance, how a drug
might be used in a way not yet authorized by the Federal Drug
Administration.
"They're saying, 'I need to increase sales by 10 percent, but
you're not giving me the tools'" to do it, Costa says. "If you're
the vice president of sales, how far do you sort of look the other
way and pretend you don't know what these sales reps are saying
to the doctors?"
From one industry to the next, those who have known the joys
of success seem to face a heightened challenge in terms of detecting
the errors of their own ways. For the successful more than anyone
else perhaps, spotting a speck in another's eye is certainly easier
than seeing a log in one's own.
But perhaps those who recognize this thorny challenge for what
it is might stand the best chance of knowing success in the tricky
realm of ethics as well. That is, if they can bear to give up
one type of success for another.
"They might lose their role," Father Williams says, if they
refuse to abide by expectations for them to do unethical things.
"But I think emotionally strong people, well-put-together people
can imagine themselves outside of that role. And so they will
take a stand on integrity, and it will trump loyalty, and they'll
say, 'if I have to leave this role, fine, but I have to live with
myself.'"
* * *
G. Jeffrey MacDonald
reports on religion, ethics and philosophical ideas for various
national news outlets. He can be reached at jeffrey_macdonald@yahoo.com.
(April 2006)
