The time has come to make ethics a cornerstone of education
A workforce guided by a strong moral code will deliver sustainable business results
2018 is an exciting time to be a student. The so called Fourth Industrial Revolution is creating a highly dynamic and fastchanging world of work that, despite fears about robotics and AI, will present tomorrow’s young employees with numerous opportunities to earn significant incomes while being actively involved in shaping the future. If the actuaries are to be believed, today’s 20-year-olds are set to live for at least 100 years more, with health advances ensuring that, for the most part, they enjoy full and active lives for much of that time.
However, while people may be set to live longer, there’s a growing aspect of business and industry that has the very real potential to detract from our overall quality of life. Corruption and fraud are becoming so commonplace in business and political environments that many people no longer find reports of these criminal activities alarming.
It’s even reached the point where the organisations that were once relied upon to police the world’s corporates — audit firms — are themselves falling foul of the law.
KPMG is a recent example of this unpalatable situation; but it’s by no means the first. Decades ago when the power giant Enron went insolvent due to corruption and fraud, their auditors, Arthur Anderson, went down with the ship, resulting in the “big five” global auditing firms becoming the “big four”.
The harsh truth is that if auditors can succumb to unethical behaviour and corrupt actions, there are few, if any, companies that should consider themselves immune from doing the same.
But while the automatic reaction to these situations may understandably be to question why the businesses involved weren’t being adequately policed, the real question is why these organisations lacked an internal culture of ethics that negates the need for external policing in the first place.
The truth in today’s global business environment is that when it comes to corruption and business crime, prevention is far better than cure. The only effective form of such prevention is truly ethical leaders, managers and workers; and appropriate education is key to the creation of this muchneeded ethical business culture.
Against this backdrop, it is concerning that very few graduates today are entering the world of business with a clear understanding of, or commitment to, ethical behaviour. I often see evidence of this in my lecture rooms as my request to students to consider their personal code of ethics is often met with bemused looks. At Monash South Africa we place a lot of emphasis upon the teaching of ethics.
The response from my students points to the fact that our modern culture seems to have turned us into people who think that unless we are committing heinous and violent crimes, we are all innately ethical. But that simply isn’t the case. Instead we are living in something of a “white lie” era that is largely accepting of small unethical acts.
Unfortunately, such small acts of unethical behaviour invariably expand into larger ones and, before we know it, entire audit firms have collapsed in a corrupt heap.
So, contrary to widely held beliefs, ethics do not necessarily come naturally to mankind and, as was established by a legendary piece of research into the subject by Harvard Business School, ethics can, and should, be taught. Of course, this begs the question: who should be teaching ethics?
The simple answer is: everyone! Raising ethical individuals undoubtedly starts at home and extends to communities, schools and even cultures.
Once these ethical cornerstones are set, the responsibility shifts to tertiary institutions to build on these foundations. And this higher education responsibility goes way beyond a one-semester programme for business students; it needs to become a core part of every programme and curriculum.
If one of the primary roles of universities is to produce graduates who are work or business ready, then surely all graduates should leave their tertiary institutions with qualifications that include a full understanding of the importance of ethics as the key to delivering the positive impact in the workplace and, more importantly, on the world.
Robotics, AI, and other technological advances may be changing the way the world works, but ethics is, and always will be, the heart of how effective that work is.
A focus on good corporate governance may get businesses some of the way there, but only a workforce guided by a strong moral code and a sincere desire to do the right thing will deliver the sustainable results business and society need.