Institutional Corruption Conference IV: A Weakness of Compliance Systems

At the Institutional Corruption conference sponsored by Harvard's Safra Ethics Center last Saturday, Ann Tenbrunsel, co-author of Blind Spots (see my blog posts on this book), noted that people act not only against what is written in ethics codes, but also against their own values. And they don't realize they're doing it. She portrayed the process by which we act as broken into three phases:  prediction, action, and recollection. In the first and third phases, we tend to think in terms of values. But when we act, we do what we want to do or what fits the context (e.g., a business or political decision rather than an ethical decision). Another way to put this is that we make forecasting errors regarding our actions, and then we engage in revisionary ethics, that is, we see good in what we did. Neither planning nor reflection reflect our actual decision.

When acting, we are strongly affected by situational cues, which allow us to deceive ourselves about the appropriateness of what we do. When we ask ourselves what kind of situation we are in, the answer predicts most of how we psychologically do what we do, and how we justify our actions. If, for example, we consider ourselves to be making a business decision, we take a cost-benefit approach. If we consider it an ethical decision, we look at things like fairness, harm, and the greater good.

Tenbrunsel also talked about some problems with compliance systems, such as government ethics programs. The problem she identified with respect to standards of conduct is that too often the focus is on the standards themselves rather than on the objectives behind the standards. This is the legal approach, which so strongly predominates in government ethics.

She feels that sanctioning systems tend to decrease trust, mutuality, creativity, and self-esteem. As with business decisions, compliance decisions (by officials, that is) are not about what is fair or appropriate, but rather how to do what one feels is necessary while complying with the language of the law. This is a legal decision rather than an ethical decision, and there is no reason to expect that it will take into account fairness or what is appropriate or might undermine public trust.

She notes that, partly because of this, compliance systems are weakened as people find ways around the rules. Because we see rules as legal obstacles, they are loopholes waiting to be bored. Government ethics advice, on the other hand, is a different kind of obstacle, one that is not so easy to bore holes into.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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