You are here
Is the Principal Cause of Ethical Misconduct Within Us?
Friday, November 15th, 2013
Robert Wechsler
I'm reading an excellent novel right now: Quiet
Chaos by Sandro Veronesi, translated from the Italian by
Michael F. Moore (Ecco, 2004, 2011).
The narrator has just learned that his boss stole money from the company they worked for. He was very close to his boss, and saw nothing in him that would lead him to believe he could steal. He wonders whether the boss had had a predisposition to steal. He wonders where the boss's "dishonesty was when he was still honest?"
His boss's boss tells him, "It wasn't there. That's the answer. It wasn't there.
"You see, at college I majored in physics. And I remember learning that an atom, passing from one state to another, emits a particle of light called a photon. I especially remember the question they asked me at the exam: they asked me, where does a photon come from? How does it manage to appear? Where was it before? … I, who had not thought about it, said something foolish: I said that the photon is already inside the atom. So it was explained to me that no, the photon wasn't inside the atom at all. The photon appears the same moment as the electron's transition, and it appears precisely because of that transition. Do you see? It's a simple concept: the sounds that my voice is producing in this moment are not found inside of me. That's how I've managed to reconcile myself to Jean-Claude's dishonesty without having to erase thirty years of my life: the actions he committed in the past two years did not come from inside of him. Like the photons, they appeared at a very distinct moment, due to very distinct causes."
In government ethics situations, a lot of people's energy is wasted trying to determine how "corrupt" the actors are, what sort of "character" they have, how much the cause of their misconduct was already within them. There is no doubt that people get corrupted, and that those with power are more likely to become corrupted. But if this is true, the best approach is not calling them "corrupt" or "bad," but rather establishing procedures that seek to prevent that corruption and to prevent misconduct that might accompany that corruption.
Punishment is one approach, but it is not the most important or effective approach. Much more misconduct can be prevented, for example, by a rule that requires withdrawal from participation in matters for a variety of reasons, combined with a process that provides for the reading of a list of all individuals and entities involved in a matter that arises and a statement that anyone with a relationship to any one of these individuals or entities should declare it and either withdraw or discuss the conflict situation, and one's handling of it, openly with the others at the meeting.
And yet while enforcement of ethics laws is common, procedures like the one described above are not. This is because we believe that others' misconduct is something that comes from inside of them, that is lurking there all along waiting to come out. Of course, we also believe that there is no misconduct lurking inside of us. And on this basis, we decide how to deal with ethical misconduct.
The especially sad thing about this is that it doesn't even matter whether someone who deals irresponsibly with a conflict situation is corrupt or not. As long as that individual is trained to recognize conflict situations, and has someone to go to for advice on how to deal with them, there are only two things that matter: (1) the misconduct itself and (2) what caused the "transition," that is, what forces in the official's environment might have led the official to act the way he did.
There are many cases, as with the boss in the novel, where the cause of the "transition" was external to the environment (in this case, a romantic relationship). In government ethics, such external causes include family and business pressures.
But there are also many cases where the cause of the "transition" is in the government's ethics environment, where there are pressures to do what others do, pressures to raise money to get re-elected, and fears of ostracism or retaliation if one reports misconduct or even says that a colleague might have a conflict situation.
And sometimes, yes, an official has been so corrupted by power that the cause of the "transition" is within, and external causes are no longer necessary to produce misconduct. That's why government ethics programs are so important. An effective program can do a lot to both prevent such corruption and to change a government's ethics environment so that the pressures on officials are less. The goal is an environment where the pressures are pushing the other way, toward responsible handling of conflict situations and the encouragement of reporting of misconduct.
In a good ethics environment, people tend to argue that no ethics program is necessary. But it is rare that such an environment lacks an ethics program. It's just that the ethics program is as informal as the harmful unwritten practices in an unhealthy ethics environment. But such informal practices can change under different leadership. It is safer to formalize informal practices that are working.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
---
The narrator has just learned that his boss stole money from the company they worked for. He was very close to his boss, and saw nothing in him that would lead him to believe he could steal. He wonders whether the boss had had a predisposition to steal. He wonders where the boss's "dishonesty was when he was still honest?"
His boss's boss tells him, "It wasn't there. That's the answer. It wasn't there.
"You see, at college I majored in physics. And I remember learning that an atom, passing from one state to another, emits a particle of light called a photon. I especially remember the question they asked me at the exam: they asked me, where does a photon come from? How does it manage to appear? Where was it before? … I, who had not thought about it, said something foolish: I said that the photon is already inside the atom. So it was explained to me that no, the photon wasn't inside the atom at all. The photon appears the same moment as the electron's transition, and it appears precisely because of that transition. Do you see? It's a simple concept: the sounds that my voice is producing in this moment are not found inside of me. That's how I've managed to reconcile myself to Jean-Claude's dishonesty without having to erase thirty years of my life: the actions he committed in the past two years did not come from inside of him. Like the photons, they appeared at a very distinct moment, due to very distinct causes."
In government ethics situations, a lot of people's energy is wasted trying to determine how "corrupt" the actors are, what sort of "character" they have, how much the cause of their misconduct was already within them. There is no doubt that people get corrupted, and that those with power are more likely to become corrupted. But if this is true, the best approach is not calling them "corrupt" or "bad," but rather establishing procedures that seek to prevent that corruption and to prevent misconduct that might accompany that corruption.
Punishment is one approach, but it is not the most important or effective approach. Much more misconduct can be prevented, for example, by a rule that requires withdrawal from participation in matters for a variety of reasons, combined with a process that provides for the reading of a list of all individuals and entities involved in a matter that arises and a statement that anyone with a relationship to any one of these individuals or entities should declare it and either withdraw or discuss the conflict situation, and one's handling of it, openly with the others at the meeting.
And yet while enforcement of ethics laws is common, procedures like the one described above are not. This is because we believe that others' misconduct is something that comes from inside of them, that is lurking there all along waiting to come out. Of course, we also believe that there is no misconduct lurking inside of us. And on this basis, we decide how to deal with ethical misconduct.
The especially sad thing about this is that it doesn't even matter whether someone who deals irresponsibly with a conflict situation is corrupt or not. As long as that individual is trained to recognize conflict situations, and has someone to go to for advice on how to deal with them, there are only two things that matter: (1) the misconduct itself and (2) what caused the "transition," that is, what forces in the official's environment might have led the official to act the way he did.
There are many cases, as with the boss in the novel, where the cause of the "transition" was external to the environment (in this case, a romantic relationship). In government ethics, such external causes include family and business pressures.
But there are also many cases where the cause of the "transition" is in the government's ethics environment, where there are pressures to do what others do, pressures to raise money to get re-elected, and fears of ostracism or retaliation if one reports misconduct or even says that a colleague might have a conflict situation.
And sometimes, yes, an official has been so corrupted by power that the cause of the "transition" is within, and external causes are no longer necessary to produce misconduct. That's why government ethics programs are so important. An effective program can do a lot to both prevent such corruption and to change a government's ethics environment so that the pressures on officials are less. The goal is an environment where the pressures are pushing the other way, toward responsible handling of conflict situations and the encouragement of reporting of misconduct.
In a good ethics environment, people tend to argue that no ethics program is necessary. But it is rare that such an environment lacks an ethics program. It's just that the ethics program is as informal as the harmful unwritten practices in an unhealthy ethics environment. But such informal practices can change under different leadership. It is safer to formalize informal practices that are working.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
---
Story Topics:
- Robert Wechsler's blog
- Log in or register to post comments
