Workplace ethics usually shows up as something small. It’s the voice in your head that says maybe I shouldn’t take credit for this idea. Or perhaps I should mention that the client said no before I got them to say yes.
Small, quiet, and completely overrulable. Nobody would ever know. That’s what makes it the whole subject.
Why are ethical decisions hard to recognize in the moment?
Because the moment doesn’t look like a decision.
People expect an ethical choice to announce itself. A clear wrong option, a clear right one, and some cost attached to choosing correctly. Those exist and they’re rare, and by the time one arrives the pattern has usually been set by hundreds of smaller moments that never felt like anything.
The credit for the idea is the example I keep returning to.
Somebody else suggested it in a meeting three weeks ago, you developed it, and now you’re presenting. You don’t decide to steal it. You simply don’t mention them, because the sentence would be awkward and the moment passes quickly, and afterward it’s done.
That’s an ordinary person taking the path of least friction, and nearly all of this consists of that.
How do large scandals get built from small moments?
By repetition, under incentives, by people who each did something defensible.
I wrote case studies on Enron, Theranos, Wells Fargo, and Cambridge Analytica because the pattern is more consistent than the drama suggests. In none of them did a room full of people agree to commit fraud. What happened was that the incentives rewarded a particular behavior, everybody nearby was doing it, and each individual step was small enough to justify to yourself on the day.
Wells Fargo is the clearest because the mechanism is so plain. Set aggressive targets, tie compensation and job security to them, and make failing to hit them a personal problem. Then a large number of individually reasonable people, none of whom joined a bank to commit fraud, do something they would have refused to do in the abstract.
The villain story is more comfortable, and it’s why people read these cases and conclude it couldn’t happen where they work.
What should you ask yourself about workplace ethics?
The useful question is what the incentives around you are rewarding.
If your organization pays for a number and doesn’t ask how the number was produced, the pressure exists whether or not anybody has said anything out loud. If the organization describes a target as non-negotiable and never discusses the means, that silence is a message and everybody hears it.
Noticing the shape of the pressure is most of the defense, because the thing that gets people is failing to realize there was anything to resist.
The book on this: The Ethical Workplace is 21 chapters on the ordinary decisions and five case studies of organizations that got it badly wrong, including Enron, Theranos and Wells Fargo.
What do you do when your boss is the ethical problem?
Then the question stops being what is right and becomes what is possible. The first thing to establish is who protects them, because that determines every option you have. Escalating to somebody who hired and shields the person you’re complaining about isn’t a route, it’s a way of identifying yourself. The practical measures are unglamorous. Keep decisions and instructions in writing as they happen, in ordinary language. Maintain your own standards even where nobody is checking, because the alternative is absorbing theirs without noticing. And build the position that lets you leave on your timing instead of theirs, the only real bargaining position most people ever have.
None of that is heroic and Most workplace ethics doesn’t resolve with somebody being vindicated.
Can workplace ethics be enforced by policy?
You can’t fix the incentive structure of the company you work for.
Not by policy. That’s the uncomfortable finding. Every organization in those case studies had a code of conduct. Wells Fargo had ethics training. The documents were fine. What overrode them was a compensation structure pointing the other way, and when a policy and an incentive disagree, the incentive wins every time.
Which is why the useful version of this subject is aimed at people instead of institutions.
You can’t fix the incentive structure of the company you work for. You can notice what it rewards, and you can decide in advance what you won’t do. That’s considerably easier to hold to than deciding in the moment.
My take
Decide your ethical lines before you need them. In the moment, under pressure, you’ll talk yourself past that small voice, and that’s how Enron and Wells Fargo got built. Policy won’t help when the incentive points the other way. Notice what your company rewards. Keep decisions and instructions in writing as they happen. Build the savings and the position that let you leave on your own timing.
Which ethical lines should you decide in advance?
Whether you name the person whose idea it was. Decide now, because in the meeting it’ll feel awkward and you’ll skip it.
Whether you report the number or the caveat. Everybody reports the number. The ethics is in the caveat.
What you won’t sign. Having a line before you’re asked to cross it’s worth more than any amount of reflection afterward.
What the incentives around you reward. Write it down without flattering anyone. It’s often not what the values statement says.
How long you’ll stay if it doesn’t change. A date makes the situation a choice and not a slow accommodation.
| Line | Why decide it in advance |
|---|---|
| Whether you name the person whose idea it was | In the meeting it feels awkward and you will skip it |
| Whether you report the number or the caveat | Everybody reports the number; the ethics is in the caveat |
| What you won’t sign | A line set beforehand beats any reflection afterward |
| What the incentives around you reward | It is often not what the values statement says |
| How long you’ll stay if it doesn’t change | A date turns slow accommodation into a choice |
The voice that says maybe I shouldn’t isn’t a sign of weakness or overthinking. In my experience it’s the most reliable instrument available, and the only real question is whether you’ve got into the habit of ignoring it.
Ethics at work comes down to small moments. The Ethical Workplace is my survival guide for modern professionals, with five case studies including the 3.5 million fake Wells Fargo accounts.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Wells Fargo Agrees to Pay $3 Billion to Resolve Criminal and Civil Investigations into Sales Practices Involving the Opening of Millions of Accounts Without Customer Authorization, U.S. Department of Justice
- Wells Fargo now says 3.5 million accounts involved in scandal, CBC News
- Theranos, CEO Holmes, and Former President Balwani Charged With Massive Fraud, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
