13 Truths for HR Professionals

Everyone rationalizes — including you. There are lots of things you don’t know and lots of people who hope you don’t find out. (The most dangerous problems are the ones you don’t know about). Complacency and overconfidence about ethics is a major vulnerability. (Everyone says it can’t happen here until it does). There’s never just one bad employee – there’s …

Honesty in Conduct

Honesty is the bedrock of trust and trustworthiness. The moral command to be honest requires us to speak and act only in ways that engender and justify trust. That seems simple enough. But honesty is a broader concept than some realize. An honest person tells the truth, is sincere, doesn’t deceive, mislead, act devious or tricky, doesn’t betray a trust, …

Avoiding Unfair Conduct

One of the problems with interpreting the concepts of fairness and justice is that so many factors can go into the notion of a fair judgment. There is rarely one single result dictated by ethical analysis. Consequently, we often do not know what is truly fair. We do, however, often know what is unfair, and our first obligation is to …

Decision-Making Models: The Golden Rule

This most basic and useful ethical theory, sometimes called the “Rule of Reciprocity,” has a long history: Confucius (500 B.C.): “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” Aristotle (325 B.C.): “We should behave to others as we wish them to behave to us.” From the Mahabharata (200 B.C.): “Do nothing to thy neighbor which …