While teaching a course on business ethics for the insurance industry the other day, the subject of ‘relative ethics’ came up. You know what I mean, relative ethics is when one action is not ethical but under some circumstance it is acceptable.

A recent Harvard School of Business survey found that almost half the MBA graduates thought it was OK to lie or cheat under ‘certain’ circumstances… No wonder Wall Street and Corporate America took the world into a recession.
Kids are, in some families, raise to believe that since Mom and Dad do it, it is OK to steal and cheat until you get caught. How disturbing ! I remember a few years ago, working for a large company, that my manager always ordered extra pens, pencils, notepad, binder in August because employees would take office supplies home ‘just in time’ for the return to school in September. I was shocked by this culture of closing the eyes to open theft of office supplies from employees. Later on, I remember reading that 80% of theft was from employees.

Is ethic relative or not? I personally think that there is a black vs white when it comes to what is the right thing to do or not. Life honesty for example, would you hire an accountant that is relatively honest? Would you want your spouse to be relatively faithful? Would you want your teacher to teach some of the truth some of the time, and lie some of the time…

Some things are black and white, ethics is one of these.