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Moral Moments

On the Other Hand...

Sometimes the greatest enemy of ethics is ‘ethics’, says Joel Marks.

Consider the growing movement among various types of professionals, such as accountants and investment consultants, to promote honesty as the best business policy. This would seem to be a no-brainer since trust is the name of the game for such professions; their raison d’etre is to convince various constituencies that everything is on the up-and-up with regard to their clients, for example, businesses seeking new investors. So if you catch any one of them cheating in some way, a pall is cast over the whole enterprise; it’s bad not only for these professionals’ clients, but for the professionals themselves. The American accounting firm of Arthur Andersen is a prime example, which simply folded after the Enron scandal. Therefore professionals should be the first to get behind professional ethics.

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