Blind Spots III — Ethics Training, Ethics Fading, and Ethical Reasoning

"Most of us dramatically underestimate the degree to which our behavior is affected by incentives and other situational factors." This is one of the most important sentences in Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It, a new book by Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel (Princeton University Press).

Ethical Fading
This sentence is central to the authors' concept of "ethical fading." Ethical fading involves the elimination of the ethical dimension of a decision. Goals, rewards, informal pressures, even compliance systems effectively blind us to the ethical implications of what we do. The result is that we do not see our behavior as ethical, but as something else:  acting for our agency, acting strategically, considering the financial costs and benefits, pushing our party's platform, doing what we are required to do by law, doing what it takes to look good.

Ethical fading is an important obstacle to acting ethically. If we do not recognize a situation's ethical aspects, how can we apply ethics laws, not to mention go beyond ethics laws to consider the appearance of impropriety, the possible loss of public trust, etc?

Ethics training depends on recognizing the ethical aspects of a situation. If what Bazerman and Tennbrunsel say is true, then ethics training needs to stop assuming that government officials can recognize when they have to apply ethics standards and concepts.

System 1 and System 2 Thinking
Ethics training assumes that we approach ethics decisions using ethical reasoning. But the authors do not feel this is often the case. They have found that emotional reactions precede ethical decision-making, and that instead of ethical reasoning leading to our ethics decisions, ethics decisions lead to our ethical reasoning. That is, our ethical reasoning tends to be used to justify our decisions, not to formulate them.

Studies have found that people with damage to the parts of brain responsible for emotion have a reduced capacity for ethical decision-making and behavior. Part of this emotion involves empathy, the ability to understand how others will feel about our conduct, which is an important element in our ability to act ethically.

The authors distinguish between System 1 and System 2 thinking. System 1 thinking involves the intuitive processing of information, which is more emotional and efficient. System 2 thinking is slower, more conscious, more logical, weighing costs and benefits.

It takes cognitive energy to stop one's unethical impulses, such as the impulse to cheat. Think how much energy it takes to stop one's ethical impulse to help one's family and friends! It also takes energy to get beyond the way a situation is framed, which often must be done in order to see a situation's ethical elements.

System 2 thinking alone doesn't ensure the responsible handling of conflicts. That is because System 1 thinking includes things like the smell test, the instinct that something isn't right, which precedes System 2 analysis of the situation and the consideration of alternatives ways of handling it. The two kinds of thinking need to work together, especially when they disagree. Good ethics training helps officials use both sorts of thinking to deal with situations where conflicts are involved.

Unintended Consequences of Ethics and Compliance Programs
Those involved with ethics and compliance programs need to be aware that these programs can have unintended consequences, because such programs often ignore ethical fading. In a business context, a research project had this result: "When no compliance system was in place, most saw the decision as an ethical one. … By contrast, when a compliance system was in place, most participants believed they were making a business decision. In this case, they appeared to ask themselves this question instead:  'what is the likelihood I will get caught, and how much will it cost me?' The imposition of a compliance system led to ethical fading, such that participants were less likely to see the decision as an ethical one."

There is also something at work here that the authors call "psychological reactance," the tendency most people have to rebel against constraints on their freedom. "Efforts to direct individuals' behavior often fail because individuals will devote extra effort to reclaiming their threatened freedom. … Instead of thinking about doing the right thing, employees focus on calculating the costs and benefits of compliance versus noncompliance – and about trying to outsmart whatever they find."

Psychological reactance is damaging to government ethics programs, especially in a world full of lawyers, who already think in terms of outsmarting systems.

Most ethics trainers realize much of this, but it is important to include this in their training programs. When much ethical decision-making is unconscious, it is important to raise officials' consciousness when it comes to the obstacles they face in making ethics decisions. Better for officials to recognize and fight tendencies in themselves than to slosh through and fight a complex ethics code that's not only a bother, but doesn't seem very important to their work.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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