Business Ethics

What were your preconceptions about business, ethics, and society before you started the course? Are most businesspeople really just self-interested and greedy?

I have been working in business for several years now, with most of my time being spent working for very large companies. Working for a large company affords one the opportunity to take advantage of all kinds of training in the area of ethics. Currently, I work for a very small company, with less than 10 employees. Ethics in the workplace isn't formally trained there, but I feel like it is sometimes easier to keep an eye out in a smaller company. Large or small, I believe that all companies can benefit from implementing a formal ethics training program.

Before taking this class, going through any ethics training or talking about it in meetings was just something I paid lip-service to. Going through the exercises was just something we all did to go through the motions and "check the box" for the Human Resources department.

However, taking this course on Business Ethics allowed me to step outside the corporate view of ethics to define just what it means to be ethical and to see real world cases of how business leaders were confronted with - and dealt with - a particular ethical issue. We heard from numerous local executives and business leaders who truly have a passion for ethics in their business dealings.

This "passion for ethics" was something that virtually every speaker claimed to have, which I found particularly intriguing. Usually, business people are passionate about their hobbies, or their business itself. I think that it is really special to meet leaders who have the topic so far at the forefront of their mind, that they would consider it a passion.

The topic of ethics, as I alluded to before, is oftentimes prevalent in business today. Corporations, large and small, are seeing that it is sometimes easier to recruit good, young candidates for open positions if the company is perceived as being "ethical." Essentially, there is a stronger pull for young people towards organizations that have a great reputation than to companies that do not.

One example of this from my personal life involves my wife, Rebecca. She graduated from Creighton's Doctor of Physical Therapy program and took a position with a company she loved interning for. Before graduation, she was exposed to several different physical therapy clinics around the country - in Omaha, Des Moines, Peoria, and Dallas. Most clinics operate ethically, but occasionally you will run across a company that has some shady business practices. She has worked for clinics that do not follow the rules regarding Medicare patients, where a certain level of care is require by law (you can't work with two Medicare patients at the same time, for example). She has also worked for clinics that have unethical billing procedures, overbilling the insurance companies or the government just due to the fact that they wouldn't ever be caught.

My wife was constantly disgusted and agonized over being "stuck" working with these companies. She would always have this dilemma of whether or not something should be said - either to the clinical director, or to a governing agency - to try to correct unethical practices. As a student, whose grade depends on favor from the clinical director, you can see how this presented her with an agonizing decision. Ultimately, she decided that she would just stick it out through her clinical, but any company that she didn't feel comfortable working with would be on a blacklist for future employment (unless they changed their policies). This caused her to potentially miss out on more lucrative job offers once she graduated, but I know that she is able to be proud of where she works now, because they don't engage in any sort of unethical business practices.

This example highlights an aspect of doing business that is all too familiar to us in our society. Companies and business leaders are oftentimes only concerned about their bottom line, or in taking shortcuts in order to make an easy dollar. I work in finance, particularly in asset management for a small company here in Omaha. My industry has always had a stigma associated with it regarding greed, and the best evidence to this stigma played out very well in the most recent financial crisis a few years ago.

There aren't always major headlines like those Bernie Madoff commanded, but the greed and unethical business practices run deep. Insider trading, for example, is a major issue. However, there are a lot of grey areas to watch out for there. At what point does performing due diligence and research breach insider information? Luckily, our industry has a wide swath of regulations and governing bodies in place to keep an eye out and protect common investors.

What we saw - over a period of about thirty years - was a systematic breakdown of these regulating bodies. At the request of financial services lobbyists, legislators in Washington ripped the teeth out of most of the organizations designed to protect consumers. At times, entire post-Great-Recession-era regulatory laws were repealed in order to make way for more profits on Wall Street. Banks and investment firms saw their stock prices skyrocket, and eventually the American people were left to bail them out for their excessive risk taking. My industry is one that is all too often driven by greed, yet it is also an industry where trust and integrity are paramount.

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What topics, theories, readings, speakers, and discussions were most exciting for you?

During this course, I was deeply affected by the topic from Week Nine on Justice. It was the topic I was chosen to present on, so it doesn't surprise me that I learned the most from it. I truly enjoyed looking at justice and fair economic distribution from a theoretical standpoint. I really loved taking Philosophy courses, so the material was captivating for me.

Relating the philosophical and political themes to my life is fairly complicated. I grew up in a conservative household, and my family is not wealthy by any means. Most of my family's political heritage is founded on their faith, only "toeing the line" on economic policies presented by their preferred party. After graduating from high school, I encountered the real world. I began to see first-hand the gross inequalities that surround us, both socially and economically. The system of political beliefs that I had grown up around felt so empty and provided few answers to solving the crisis I was seeing with my own eyes. This class - and Week Nine particularly - has really helped me to hone my beliefs about society. I was able to confront any lasting preconceptions on fairness and equality