In most change initiatives, if you were to ask “who is responsible for compliance?”, there would be a clear answer. However, if you were to ask “who is responsible for ensuring what we do is ethical”, unless you are in a very narrow set of industries (research, pharmaceutical, etc) you’re likely to be met with either a blank stare or a somewhat “corporate” answer (by which I mean an ambiguous word salad answer that leaves you more confused after hearing the answer than before).
I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently, particularly as ethics seem to be as important as ever, if not more so. Thinking back on some projects I’ve worked on I wonder if a core issue here is that organisations rarely consciously define their ethical boundaries. Put differently, they don’t say what they consider to be ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, so it is left for teams to collectively navigate.
Of course, organisations have mission statements and values, and being good corporate citizens we learn them off by heart. But how often are they actually used or useful? I suppose occasionally these might even get shoe-horned into a business case. But even then, in my experience, they don’t really help define what the organisation considers ethical.
Compliance vs Ethics
At this point you might be pondering why we even need to think about ethics. I mean, if something is legal and compliant, then that’s enough, surely? Not in my view. I’d say there are things that are legal and compliant that many people would consider unethical. But the challenge is that different people will have different views on what is and isn’t ethical… and without an organisation-level discussion or definition things can get inconsistent.
Let’s take one small, relatively insignificant example. I recently went on a short break abroad, and upon landing I received the following text message:
Read more: Compliance, Ethics and Expectations: Three Different Conversations
I presume this is sent to fulfil a regulatory obligation. And I assume it ticks the compliance boxes that it needs to fulfil. But is it ethical to send a message like this? Would you know, reading this text message, what the cost of data would be, or how much data you could use before incurring a charge?
As a customer, it just confused (and slightly annoyed) me, and I just assumed that it was cheaper for them to send a ‘catch all’ text to all customers who roam abroad rather than actually work out what tariff they are on and send them the pertinent information. I might be wrong of course, but let’s assume that’s the case for the sake of this article. Would it be ethical to send confusing information to a customer to save money?
How often is compliance seen as a ‘tick box’ exercise like this, potentially (and ironically) at the expense of doing something that would be considered more ethical by the consumer?
Compliant, Ethical and Expected are Three Separate Things
There’s also a third dimension: what is expected. As a customer, I expected a clearer text message. Yes, yes, sometimes there needs to be the 10,000 word legal disclaimer that nobody reads—and that can sit in a linked document somewhere. But just tell me what things actually cost.
So, I think it’s worth considering these three dimensions in parallel:
- What is compliant?
- What is ethical?
- What is expected?
Curating Conversations
This will inevitably lead to conversations about what is ethical in a set of circumstances, and sometimes how we can deliver something that meets what’s expected while also being compliant. Those conversations are good; they help ensure trade-offs are made deliberately.
They also help us have the hard discussions about what ethics even mean in a particular context. One way of visualising this is to consider that the organisation has a set of values, and the team needs to consider various options or decisions in the context of those. Which are best aligned? Which would cause unintended consequences that aren’t aligned? Who might we be excluding? Who might we be negatively impacting? Systems thinking becomes important in these discussions too.
Stay Curious
As with any situation, it’s important to stay curious and think broadly. Too often, important voices get marginalised, including those actually closest to the work. As practitioners of change, it’s crucial that we help to amplify those.
What are your views? Please add a comment below, and let’s keep the conversation flowing!
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About the author:
Adrian Reed is Principal Consultant at Blackmetric Business Solutions, an organisation that offers Business Analysis consulting and training solutions. Adrian is a keen advocate of the analysis profession, and is constantly looking for ways of promoting the value that good analysis can bring.
To find out more about the training and consulting services offered at Blackmetric, please visit www.blackmetric.com
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