We have a tendency to look at folks who get into ethical and legal trouble and say, “I know I would never behave like that.’ You probably would not, but you are only seeing them at their last step. You did not see the tiny steps that led to their eventual downfall. Study how and why they made the decisions they made. The idea is to try to avoid feeling superior to those who have made mistakes; real learning comes with understanding how easily we can fall into ethical missteps through flaws in our analyses and reasoning processes and because of pressures that allow us to feel justified in our actions. Your goal is to develop a process for analysis and reasoning, one that finds you looking at ethical issues more deeply instead of through the prism of emotions, desires, and pressures. You are not just studying ethics; you are studying business history. And you are also studying you. Try to relate your vulnerabilities to theirs.

Remember as you read these cases that you are reading about bright, capable, and educated individuals who made mistakes. The mistakes often seem clear when you study them in hindsight. But the ethical analyses of those who made those mistakes were flawed whether through poor perspective, pressure, or, sometimes, the stuff of Greek tragedies, hubris.

One of the goals of this text is to help you avoid the traps and pitfalls that consume some people in business. As you study the cases in this unit and the others that follow, try not to be too hard on the human subjects. Learn from them and try to discover the flaws in their ethical analyses.

One step that can give us greater clarity when we face ethical dilemmas is a credo. A credo is different from a code of ethics and does not consist of the virtues that companies usually list in a code of ethics, for example, “We are always honest; we follow the laws” The credo demands more because it sets the parameters for those virtues. A credo is virtue in action. A credo defines you and your ethical boundaries.

You get your personal credo with introspection on two areas of questions:

1. Who are you? Many people define themselves by the trappings of success, such as how much money they have or make, the type of cars they drive, their clothes, and all things tangible and material. A credo grounds you and means that you need to find a way to describe yourself in terms or qualities that are part of you, no matter what happens to you financially, professionally, or in your career. For example, one good answer to “Who are you?”
might be that you have a talent and ability for art or writing. Another may be that you are kind and fair, showing those Solomon-like virtues to others around you. List those qualities you could have and keep regardless of all the outer trappings.
2. The second part of your credo consists of answering these questions: What are the things that you would never do to get a job? To keep a job? To earn a bonus? To win a contract or gain a client? The answers to these questions result in a list, one that you should be keeping as you read the cases and study the individual businesspeople who made mistakes. Perhaps the title of your list could be “Things | Would Never Do to Be Successful,” “Things | Would Never Do to Be Promoted,” or even “TI ings | Would Never Do to Make Money.” One scientist reflected on the most important line that he would never cross, and after you have studied a few of the product liability cases, you will come to understand why this boundary was important to him, “! would never change the results of a study to get funding or promise anyone favorable results in exchange for funding.” A worker at a refinery wrote this as his credo: “I would never compromise safety to stay on schedule or get my bonus.” An auditor in a state auditor general's office wrote, “| would never sign a document that | know contains false information.” The credo is a list, gleaned from reading about the experiences of others, that puts the meat on Polonius’s immortal advice to his son, Laertes, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. “To thine own self be true” (Hamlet, Act |, Scene Ill). We quote Polonius without really asking, “What does that mean?” The credo takes us from eloquent advice to daily action. The credo is a personal application of the lessons in the cases. You will spot the lack of definitive lines in these case studies and begin to understand how their decision processes were so shortsighted. The goal is to help you think more carefully, deeply, and fully about ethical issues..........................

Discussion Question Explain the role that “How do | want to be remembered?” plays in your credo?