Is "Ethics" the Best Word for Conflicts of Interest?

“Ethics” is an unfortunate name for what appears in government ethics codes. When people think about ethics, they think about right and wrong, about moral obligations, about being honest and upright, about the Golden Rule.

This isn’t what government ethics deals with. Government ethics deals with a limited area of conduct: conflicts of interest. And most people don’t realize this, or understand conflicts of interest.

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When something is unethical, it is wrong. The right thing to do is not to do it at all. A conflict of interest is not wrong, although many ethics codes say it is. When you have a conflict, the right thing to do is deal with it responsibly, by disclosing it and recusing yourself. If conflicts are frequent, you resign or change jobs.

There is a gulf between what people think is ethics and what ethics boards do. This confuses people, and this confusion undermines the use and mission of ethics boards.

One result is that many people bring ethics complaints that are all about ethics, but not at all relevant to an ethics code. For example, according to an article in yesterday’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a complaint was made by the father of a child who went to talk with a state senator about family planning and sex education. Among other things, the conservative senator asked the children how many babies they killed this year.

The senator’s conduct was outrageous, but it had nothing to do with conflicts of interest, and the Legislative Ethics Board dismissed the complaint. The father is angry, however, because his cause was just.

This is also a problem for citizens involved in writing or amending ethics codes. In my town, a committee included a discrimination provision in a draft ethics code. Discrimination is a problem, but not a problem for ethics boards. There’s a whole world of laws on this sort of unethical conduct, and it would be a great burden on a local ethics board to have to deal with this complex area in addition to government ethics.

Campaign finance reform, however, while not apparently about ethics, does have to do with conflicts of interest, because campaign contributions are gifts given in a specific situation. Therefore, campaign finance is an area that city ethics boards often deal with.

Freedom of information seems to have even less to do with ethics, but since disclosure is an important way to keep government officials from putting their interests ahead of the public interest (and the public interest is almost always in having access to information), this too is an area of government ethics. This is why, for example, disclosure provisions are central to ethics codes.

How does the government ethics profession get across the idea that ethics isn’t about ethics as we know it, but rather about conflicts of interest and the many forms they take? Do we change the name of ethics laws to Conflicts of Interest Codes? Even using a term as neutral as Rules of Conduct implies such things as rudeness and discrimination.

Nomenclature is extremely important. There is a precedent in the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board, which changed to its current name in 1988. Twenty years and there don’t seem to be any followers. I think that, when a local government considers changing its ethics laws, it should also consider changing the name of its code and the body that enforces it.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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