Professional Values and Ethics

With the huge fall in the stock market at the end of 2008 came a call for investigations, prosecutions, and further government restrictions on the investment banking industry. These investigations showed Company Executive Officers of a few large banks, which were failing, taking triple figure bonus' and luxurious vacations even after the businesses they were trusted to oversee were in bankruptcy and their stockholders had lost vast amounts of money. At the same time, the largest "Ponzy Scheme" in history was revealed as a trusted financier, Bernie Madoff, stole nearly sixty five billion dollars from investors and was later sentenced 150 years in prison. Circumstances like these prove the importance, as well as the fragility, of ethics in business.

Most people in the United States place their trust, money, and future into the hands of banks, investors, and businesses. With so much on the line, the question arises if it is possible to have true ethics when it comes to business. Author and management consultant, Peter Drucker, posed this question in his book The Ecological Vision. He did so not to say that ethics is not possible in business, but to ensure that "business ethics" was not distinguished from every day "ethics". Drucker said that it is convenient for executives to dismiss violations of policy or regulations by claiming it could create more jobs or generate wealth in the future. It "becomes a cost-benefit calculation for them". The problem with this outlook is that what is wrong, is wrong regardless of whether money is made and jobs are saved or not. Violating laws, regulations, or simple "proper behavior" in the long run only leads to failure (Wartzman, 2008, 1,2).

One of the biggest factors in ethics is the issue conflict of interest. A famous quote about the United States Justice System is "justice is blind". In fact the Statue of Justice has her eyes covered by a blindfold to indicate that she is beyond influence by anything other than the facts. Although we know that biases arise from conflicts of interest, they are nearly impossible to eliminate. Existing laws are often inadequate allowing for "loopholes" in the system. One example of this is with the former CEO of Enron, Andrew Fastow. He hid ownership of a special purpose enterprise (SPE) that he used to hide Enrons massive losses by transferring ownership of it to a colleague's homosexual partner. Since Texas law does not recognize gay marriage the transfer did not violate any laws. This allowed Fastow to transfer money from Enron into the SPE and into his pocket since there was no legal connection between the two men (Messick, 2008, 78).

In general, there are two basic ways to handle ethical dilemmas. The first is to focus on the practical consequences of our actions arguing "no harm, no foul". The other focuses on the action itself, stating that some actions are