Let’s meet two individuals: Barbara and Klaus.

• Barbara freely admits to being a selfish person. She rarely, if ever, considers her friends or anyone else when deciding how to act, and is completely open about this. You can totally rely on Barbara in all circumstances to think only of herself.
• Klaus is a dedicated member of the Nazi Party in 1930s Germany and fully signs up to its central beliefs and principles. When he discovers that his own brother is involved in a plot to smuggle Jews and other subversives out of Germany, he is very upset – but decides reluctantly that he has to inform on him. Not for personal gain – but because he believes it’s the right thing to do.

You could argue that these people have integrity. In fact, their stories are deliberately designed to challenge our views on what integrity means. 

In the first case, Barbara is entirely consistent in her behaviour – someone who could be described as ‘true to herself.’ But it is clear that the way in which she expresses that consistency is morally flawed. 

Klaus, meanwhile, could credibly argue that he is standing firm as a devoted member of his organisation and following its code to the letter. However, the organisation itself was one of history’s greatest evils.

This Global Ethics Day, we’re unpacking integrity; what it means in the context of business ethics, and how to apply it in training. 

Real-world ethics

The Barbara and Klaus stories first appeared in the 2012 whitepaper ‘Real Integrity: Practical solutions for organisations seeking to promote and encourage integrity’, published by ICAEW in partnership with the University of Leeds. Its underlying research stemmed from two sources: 

• survey responses from 1,500 ICAEW members; and
• interviews with 94 people at 15 employers across a spectrum of industries, from public bodies and charities to retailers and manufacturers. 

One of the paper’s co-authors was Chris Megone, Professor of Interdisciplinary and Applied Ethics at the University of Leeds, and Head of its Interdisciplinary Ethics Applied (IDEA) National Centre of Excellence. He tells us that the drive behind the paper came from research the centre had undertaken on ethics in medicine. A cornerstone of that effort was to approach professional ethics in a collaborative – or interdisciplinary – fashion.

“While our academics knew a lot about ethical concepts,” he explains, “they didn’t know what it was like to work in medicine, in terms of doctors’ lived experiences. So, we decided that ethicists and doctors should work together. Rather than just rephrasing what, say, the Hippocratic Oath may tell us about confidentiality, consent and the ‘do no harm’ principle, let’s unpack how those elements should be applied to the practical realities of medical work. Let’s bring ethical concepts to life in ways that people will recognise and relate to.”

When values clash

Integrity became the whitepaper’s subject because it is one of the ICAEW Code of Ethics’ five fundamental principles – perhaps the most important. And as the stories that open this article demonstrate, its meaning is not always straightforward. But the dialogue with the interviewees uncovered a broad desire among workers to support values that are ethical and responsible, and to be true to oneself in relation to those values.

“'Integrity' derives from the Latin integritas, meaning wholeness,” Megone points out. “When employees are true to a set of values and to themselves at the same time, they have a sense of oneness and completeness. But conversely, the interviews also showed the extent to which employees can come under immense pressure if the culture they’re in expresses values – whether explicitly or implicitly – that aren’t in line with their own.”

Megone has an interest in moral psychology, or how character is formed. He cites Aristotle, who called human beings ‘gregarious creatures’; we develop through our interactions with others. “The communities in which we live and work are crucial for our development. Of course, we’re capable of independence. But we’re also heavily subject to influence.”

In Megone’s view, ethical mismatches disrupt or break people’s desired sense of wholeness in two ways. First, on a macro level: an employee ponders their employer’s values statement or code and discerns no resemblance between what’s written down and how the organisation actually operates.

Then, on an individual level: an employee feels that their organisation is acting in ways that conflict with their own personal values. In each case, the experience can significantly deplete morale, increase stress and lead the employee to consider acting out of character.

Translating your values

“In many organisations,” Megone says, “if you ask people what the values are, they may not be able to recall them all. And even if they could, they may be less clear on how those values are meant to play out in daily life. So, you must take steps to translate values into practice.”

For Megone, those steps include setting tone from the top and ensuring that incentives and disciplinary actions are aligned with the code’s intent. It also means establishing an effective speak-up process, which will provide the employer with the right information to adjust areas of culture when they come into tension. But perhaps most importantly, organisations must run effective ethics training.

“In our research at the Centre, we’ve found that many employees don’t think that their ethics training is very good,” Megone says. “If your training is too simplistic or abstract, then when you do come up against some tough, ethical decisions, you’ll find it hasn’t given you the tools you need to properly address them. So, in an interdisciplinary context, training must help people bring to life key concepts that we philosophers talk about, such as fairness, justice, integrity, honesty and trust – which may seem quite straightforward at first glance, but turn out on closer inspection to be much more complicated than is obvious.

“I don’t think any organisation ever gets it gets it completely right. It’s a never-ending process.”