Ethics is Your Business.

Did you know stealing a pen from your employer is embezzlement? It might not seem like a big deal, but what it says about you IS a big deal. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn discusses ethics and how little things become big things that create a negative workplace culture.

Rob Artigo: Ray, interpersonal communications, which obviously we’re doing here, expense reports, travel expenses, these are things most business people deal with, so let’s talk about handling ethical decisions at the ground level, in other words, where we’re penciling in mileage and things like that. I mean, when we’re making decisions at the ground level where we’re displaying ethics and where those ethics may come from in the course of your life and business life. I found this definition on the Santa Clara University Website on ethics. It says, “Ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness or specific virtues.” Do you agree with that particular definition?

Ray Zinn: Absolutely. I mean, I define ethics as doing what’s right when no one’s watching.

Ray Zinn Cont:I call it the paperclip syndrome. In other words, if you start stealing paperclips at work it’ll go on from there. Then it’s pencils, and then it goes on to thumb drives, and maybe other office equipment. And then, cheating at that root level, that it grows into something big. Everything starts small and then grows bigger, and so what you want to do is not even, as I call it the paperclip syndrome, don’t even consider even taking paperclips at work. As I said, it starts small.

Rob Artigo: Yeah, I’ve seen in job interviews where one of the questions is usually asked is have you stolen from any previous employer? And sometimes people will say, “Well, maybe I’ve taken a pen home.” Or they’ll suggest, “Haven’t you even just taken a pen home?” And they get down to just that kind of thing because I suppose they’re looking to see if you have a tendency to abscond with even the smallest items because that’s blow back on the bottom line.

Ray Zinn: Yeah. As I’ve called it, the paperclip syndrome, where if you just say, “Well, it’s just a paperclip, it’s only worth a couple pennies,” then it goes from there. We want to avoid even the appearance of dishonesty and, as I said, honesty or integrity and ethics is doing what’s right when no one’s watching. If people are watching, that’s one thing, that’s why we have cameras around and other surveillance devices to let people know, “Hey, we’re watching you,” but you should do what’s right when no one’s watching.

Rob Artigo: Right. And if we can do this by our own upbringing, what we’re used to and what we believe our real human standards are or we can rely on those forces in our workplace, for example, that set the tone. Is there a combination of those things that we should think about the most? Is it more going to be something that’s built in us or is it something that the company can do to obligate the employees to pay attention to ethics?

Ray Zinn: Let’s talk about that because, at the company level, if the employees feel the company is dishonest then they don’t have a problem taking and doing dishonest things at the company, and so it stems from the top. In other words, if the CEO or the president or managers and so forth, if they’re being dishonest their employees will end up being dishonest because monkey see, monkey do, as they say. The ethics of a company really start at the top and if you’re ethical, then as a leader, then it’s more likely your employees will be ethical. I like this TV program called American Greed and I see all kinds of things that take place that I was astou