Years ago, our parent company (but not the one you see in my signature today) held a series of management classes one of with covered 'ethics'. Now these were not professionally organized classes but rather something put together by our executive management.
I was working in sales back then and so our sales VP was responsible for getting material and guest speakers and so on, so he thought, what could be better than inviting the corporation's chief consul to talk about ethical behavior. However, I don't think the VP was expecting what it was that he got. While the corporate attorney did spend time talking about the role that the legal department played in the corporation (note that we were part of a Fortune 500 company so this covered a lot of territory) and how as employees, particular managers in a sales organization that dealt with not only internal but also external relationships and opportunities, how we needed to be aware of the many legal issues that we might encounter and how his organization could help us.
However, it was when the discussion finally came around to 'ethics' that he sort of stunned at least our executive team. It was when he said that lawyers should never be expected to be experts on ethics that was when the wheels came off. He followed up by explaining that in a purely professional situation, ethics was 'outside' their area of responsibility. They are responsible for what's legal or not, which can be very different from what is considered to be ethical or not. Now he did admit that if one followed a strict code of ethics, one which was generally accepted by a large segment of the population that you would probably never need to worry too much about his people having to come and bail you out of some mess. However, he did explain that if we took the opposite extreme and did only which could be defended in court as being legal, that this would NOT automatically make you appear to having acted in an 'ethical' manner. In other words, just because something is LEGAL does not automatically make it ETHICAL in the minds of everyone concerned.
Anyway, it turned out to be one of the best 'classes' I ever took since we were able to really get into a discussion which forced us to look at things differently, so perhaps in the end maybe it was a good idea that we got to take this up with our chief consul as he was ready to dispel the misunderstanding of the relationship between ethics and the law.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Design Solutions
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
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