Moral Clarity III - Ethics Environments

This is the third in a series of blog posts inspired by reading Susan Neiman's book Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists (Princeton, 2008). One of her topics is how an individual’s organizational environment can greatly affect his or her conduct. Her goal is not to excuse misconduct, but to explain it and to look at ways of avoiding it. She focuses on two well-known experiments.

In 1971, Philip Zimbardo did the Stanford Prison Experiment, in which individuals were asked to play the roles of guard and prisoner. The horrifying results showed how easily individuals fall into positions of authority and submission, abuse the authority, and accept the abuse. The 1961 Stanley Milgram experiment, in which individuals thought they were giving serious electric shocks to people, was equally horrifying.

Zimbardo shows in his recent book, The Lucifer Effect, that there are many other indications, both in experiments and in real life (Abu Ghraib is only one example), that not only will individuals act unethically in certain roles and environments, but very few people have either the ability to appreciate what is happening or the courage to make any effort to stop it.

This is why the usual platitudes about rotten apples and “99% of all public servants are ethical” are beside the point. As Zimbardo has written, “Any deed that any human being has ever committed, however horrible, is possible for any of us – under the right or wrong situational circumstances.  That knowledge does not excuse evil; rather, it democratizes it, sharing its blame among ordinary actors rather than declaring it the province only of deviants and despots – of Them but not Us.”

Zimbardo also feels that each of us underestimates his or her vulnerability to bad ethics environments.  Becoming aware of this vulnerability is “the first step in shoring up resistance to such detrimental influences.”

In other words, the worst thing we can do is say that unethical conduct is about Them, that is, about the rotten apples. We each need to focus on our own role in our ethics environment, what we do to enable others’ unethical conduct, what we do to allow ourselves to be co-opted into unethical conduct, how we fail to criticize others’ unethical conduct (to those doing it or to those who supervise them), and how we justify our own unethical conduct, starting with the most minor offenses.

Each of us can have an important effect on what those around us do. If we see a mistake in a budget item, we don’t hesitate to point it out. Why shouldn’t we point out a conflict of interest that has not been disclosed, or a meeting that should not be held in private?

It is reasonable, of course, to worry about the effect of pointing these things out, which is usually very different from the effect of pointing out a budget mistake. But as soon as a government official stops and realizes that pointing out a conflict of interest could cause problems for her, she needs to move on to the next step:  recognizing that this is evidence of a poor ethics environment, an environment that discourages ethical behavior and the reporting of unethical behavior.

It is important to recognize that a poor ethics environment is everybody’s doing. If a mayor’s aides were to remind him that it is not professional to give a contract to his sister, because it would lessen the public’s trust in government, the mayor would likely not do it. A mayor who would go ahead and do it anyway has probably been enabled by silent aides and colleagues for years, that is, by others who are looking after their own personal interests, as well, without recognizing that, in the long run, being silent is against everyone’s interests.

This is how poor ethics environments are established, in government, in prison, and even in university labs. And it is very hard to change them, because the fear of retaliation becomes increasingly justified, and loyalty takes over as the organization’s principal value.

Here’s what Daniel Ellsberg, who after many years in government published the Pentagon Papers, wrote about his government experience:

Embarrassing one's boss was the worst form of betrayal, and if avoiding that meant giving presidential advice you knew to be wrong, well, so much the worse for the country.  In turn, presidents could rely on subordinates to cover for their lies, out of a mixture of loyalty and commitment to their own careers.  Help your friends and hurt your enemies: no other moral code had force.

“Help your friends and hurt your enemies” is the moral code of many local governments. And yet not a single government official would ever say this publicly. What kind of a moral code is that?

Other blog posts in this series:
Reason and Ideals
Intentions

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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